NI Energy Price Rises, October 2026: Share Energy Electricity Up 12.6%, SSE and Firmus Gas Up 19%

I read every one of the 368 quote requests that came through this site between March and 6 September. Almost all of them start in the same place. A bill went up again, and the person filling in the form wants to know whether the roof can do anything about it.

Four more Northern Ireland tariff changes land in October. The one that made the news on 9 September is not the biggest of them.

Share Energy is raising electricity prices by 12.6% from 1 October. That is real money for the 40,675 households on its books. But the two gas announcements behind it are larger, the cause of all of them is the same, and there is a quieter change to how Northern Ireland is treated on VAT that decides how much of it you actually feel.

I built this site and I run its daily generation tracker, so here is the whole October picture in one place, checked against supplier announcements and the Utility Regulator on 9 September 2026. Then what it does to the numbers on solar.

Every Change Landing in October 2026

Supplier	Fuel	Increase	Effective	Typical impact	Customers
Share Energy	Electricity	+12.6%	1 October	about £129 a year	40,675 homes
SSE Airtricity	Natural gas	+19.2%	1 October	about £172 a year	200,000
Firmus Energy (Ten Towns)	Natural gas	+8.98%	1 October	about £87 a year on credit, £85 on prepayment	about 77,000
Firmus Energy (Greater Belfast)	Natural gas	+12.5%	8 October	about £12 a month	about 54,000

Power NI, which supplies more than 521,000 Northern Ireland homes, has not announced anything for October. Its last move was the 6.2% rise on 1 July 2026.

Share Energy: What the 12.6% Actually Changes

Share Energy has 41,092 customers, of which 40,675 are domestic and 417 are commercial. It is owned by local business people with a background in renewable electricity. Chief executive Damian Wilson said the rise “isn’t a decision we’ve taken lightly” and pointed at the industry’s exposure to wholesale gas, calling on government to address Northern Ireland’s over-reliance on it.

The arithmetic is unusually clean, because only one number moved.

	Until 30 September	From 1 October
Unit rate	31.960p	35.99p
Standing charge	13.330p a day	13.330p a day
Annual cost on 3,200 kWh	£1,071	£1,200

The standing charge is untouched. The entire £129 comes from the unit rate, which is the number solar savings are measured against, so this increase passes through to a solar owner’s savings almost pound for pound.

Households on Share Energy’s special night rates, including the electric vehicle tariffs, are treated differently again. The day rate rises 13.89% and the night rate 10.46%, so Share Eco 7 goes from 32.040p day and 15.560p night to roughly 36.49p and 17.19p.

One thing worth saying plainly, because it is the part of Share Energy’s model people ask about: the company still commits to sharing half its profits with qualifying customers, and says the first profit share could be available in 2028. That commitment survives the price rise. It is also three tariff years away, and it does not reduce the bill arriving in October.

It changes where Share Energy sits in the market

Before this rise, Share Energy’s unit rate was 0.14p cheaper than Power NI’s and its annual bill was £44 dearer. Power NI charges no daily standing charge on its 24 hour domestic tariffs. Share Energy charges 13.330p. That was a close call, and most people got it wrong by reading the headline pence figure.

From 1 October it stops being a close call. A Share 24 Credit customer on 3,200 kWh pays about £1,200 a year. Power NI’s monthly Direct Debit tariff with online billing costs about £1,027 on the same usage. The gap goes from £44 to about £173.

If you are with Share Energy and you have not compared since April, that is the number to act on. Our comparison of all five NI suppliers ranks them by payment method, because the cheapest supplier here is a different company depending on whether you pay by Direct Debit, keypad or on receipt of a bill.

The Gas Rises Are the Bigger Number

SSE Airtricity is Northern Ireland’s largest natural gas supplier, and its 19.2% rise from 1 October adds close to £172 a year to a typical household bill across the Greater Belfast and west network areas. The company blamed volatility in global energy markets and higher wholesale gas prices.

Firmus Energy follows with two different increases for its two network areas. The Ten Towns area, which covers Antrim, Armagh, Ballymena, Banbridge, Coleraine, Craigavon, Newry, Londonderry and more than 25 other towns and villages, rises 8.98% on 1 October, about £7 a month or £87 a year on a credit meter and £85 on prepayment. Greater Belfast rises 12.5% on 8 October, about £12 a month for roughly 54,000 customers.

Sharleen Winning, head of regulation at Firmus Energy, said the company “held off for as long as we could in the hope of a resolution that would lead to a reduction in the global wholesale prices”.

Why a gas rise is an electricity story too

Gas generates around half of all the electricity consumed in Northern Ireland, and gas plant usually sets the price at the margin. So the wholesale gas number is upstream of both bills.

UK natural gas futures reached £1.96 per therm on 9 September 2026, the highest since December 2022. A year earlier the average was about 85p. Colin Broomfield of the Utility Regulator has attributed the sustained level to the conflict in the Middle East, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic, which carries about 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.

That is the mechanism behind all four October increases and the six electricity increases before them. It is also entirely outside the control of anyone reading this.

2026: Six Electricity Increases, No Cuts

Supplier	Increase	Effective	Typical impact
Click Energy	+9.5%	1 April	discounted tariffs also withdrawn
Share Energy	+26%	1 April	rate set at 31.960p
Power NI	+6.2%	1 July	about £64 a year on credit, £62 on keypad
SSE Airtricity	+6.2%	1 August	about £72 a year
Budget Energy	+9.5%	4 August	about £122 a year
Share Energy	+12.6%	1 October	about £129 a year

Every one of Northern Ireland’s five household electricity suppliers has raised prices in 2026. Not one has cut. Share Energy has now moved twice, and so has Click Energy, which alongside its April rise withdrew its discounted tariffs and has sat at a standard 38.808p since.

Where that leaves the market, from the Consumer Council table checked on 6 September 2026, with Share Energy’s October rate added:

Supplier	Unit rate range, including VAT
Budget Energy	29.830p introductory discount to 38.808p standard
Power NI	32.100p bill pay, 33.290p keypad
SSE Airtricity	34.670p to 40.790p
Share Energy from 1 October	35.99p
Click Energy	38.808p

The full rate table, with standing charges and annual costs, is on our Northern Ireland electricity prices page.

The VAT Cut That Does Not Reach Here

This is the part most coverage skips, and it changes what October feels like.

The UK government has cut VAT on domestic electricity to 0% for six months from 1 October 2026, worth roughly £45 a year to a typical household in Great Britain. That cut does not apply in Northern Ireland. Electricity here stays at 5% VAT.

The reason is the Windsor Framework. It allows the UK to set its own VAT rates on some things in Northern Ireland. The EU has to approve the change first, and that approval is not in place. Until it is, the 5% stands. Every NI unit rate quoted on this page includes it.

Rather than leave Northern Ireland out, the Treasury is passing the equivalent funding to the Executive. What that turns into is a discount rather than a lower rate.

• All Northern Ireland households, about 855,000, were already in line for roughly £30 a year off electricity bills for three years under the NIRO Domestic Electricity Discount Scheme, funded by £81m and delivered through suppliers as a credit or a keycard transfer.
• On 25 August 2026 Economy Minister Dr Caoimhe Archibald said her department wants the VAT funding added to that scheme and paid as a single combined discount worth more than £50, from October rather than September.
• That combination was still subject to Treasury approval when this page was checked on 9 September 2026. Treat the £50 as an intention, not a payment date.
• Separately, a Stormont scheme giving eligible households a £100 voucher towards home heating oil is due to open for applications in October.

Set against a £129 electricity rise and a £172 gas rise, a discount of £50 or so covers part of one of them. It is worth having. It does not change the direction.

What This Does to Solar in Northern Ireland

Solar economics here rest on one number: what you would otherwise pay to import a unit of electricity. Every kWh your roof produces that you use in the house is a kWh you do not buy.

A 4kW system in Northern Ireland generates around 3,400 kWh a year. Without a battery, a typical household uses about half of it directly, so roughly 1,700 kWh.

Unit rate	Value of 1,700 kWh self-consumed
31.960p, Share Energy until 30 September	about £543
32.100p, Power NI bill pay	about £546
35.99p, Share Energy from 1 October	about £612
38.808p, Click Energy and Budget Energy standard	about £660

For a Share Energy customer, the October rise adds about £69 a year to what the same panels are worth, without a single component changing. That is the whole mechanism, and it is worth being honest about which way round it works. Solar did not get better this month. The alternative got worse.

Against that, the electricity you generate yourself has a fixed price. A £7,000 system producing 3,400 kWh a year makes roughly 80,000 to 85,000 kWh across a 25 year life, once you allow for the panels losing a little output each year. That is about 8p to 9p per kWh, set on the day it is installed.

Grid electricity has moved six times this year. The 8p to 9p has not moved at all.

Compare quotes from NI installers if you want that number for your own roof. Prices for the same specification routinely differ by more than £1,000 between installers here.

One date to watch on the export side

The other half of the ledger is what you get paid for what you export, and there is a Northern Ireland specific trap in it.

The Smart Export Guarantee is Great Britain legislation and does not extend to Northern Ireland. NI suppliers pay for exported solar voluntarily. Power NI’s published microgeneration rate is 9.64p per kWh for the tariff year ending 30 September 2026. That rate resets every September, so it will be restated within days of this article going up. Anyone comparing quotes in October should check the new figure, not the one in a brochure. Our NI solar export payments guide carries it with the date it was checked.

Because export pays less than a third of what import costs, self-consumption is what matters here, far more than it does in Great Britain.

What To Do Now

1. Find your unit rate on your latest bill. It is the figure every saving on this page is measured against, and after six increases it is probably not the one you remember.
2. If you are with Share Energy, compare before 1 October. The gap to Power NI’s cheapest bill pay tariff goes from about £44 a year to about £173. The Consumer Council price comparison tool is free and independent.
3. Do not wait for the discount to decide anything. More than £50 is welcome and it is still awaiting Treasury sign-off. It offsets part of one increase.
4. If you are struggling, contact your supplier first. Every NI supplier has to offer payment options and support, and both the Utility Regulator and the Consumer Council say the same thing: do it early, not after the arrears build.
5. Do not wait for a solar grant. There is no Northern Ireland scheme that funds domestic solar. What every household gets is 0% VAT on installation until 31 March 2027. Our NI solar grants guide sets out exactly what is and is not available.

Raymond Gormley of the Consumer Council called the Share Energy increase “very unwelcome news” and made the point that winter is when two thirds of NI energy gets consumed, so this is the worst possible timing for it.

None of us set the wholesale gas price. The only part of the bill any household controls is how much of its electricity it has to buy in the first place.

Tariffs, percentages and effective dates checked on 9 September 2026 against supplier announcements, the Utility Regulator and the Consumer Council electricity price comparison table dated 6 September 2026. Rates include VAT at 5%.