ESB Group incurred additional operating costs of €100 million due to Storm Éowyn, the company’s latest half-year results indicated.
The storm, which hit Ireland in January, left 815,000 properties without power while causing extensive damage to the company’s network.
The network encompasses 160,000 kms of overhead lines and 2.4 million poles.
The €100 million cost came from network repairs across the island between the ESB’s network in the Republic and its Northern Ireland Electricity Networks subsidiary, Paul Stapleton, the ESB’s chief financial officer told the The Irish Times.
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“That’s pretty much a final cost. We have, by and large, all the costs captured at this stage,” he said.
Despite the impact of the storm, pretax profit at ESB Group for the six months to the end of June remained largely stable.
Underlying operating profit for the period was €424 million, marginally up on the same period last year.
However, revenue dropped from €3.7 billion to €3.5 billion.
Mr Stapleton said the price outlook for consumers was “broadly positive” with wholesale gas prices internationally, the main driver of domestic prices here, more likely to soften on the back of increased LNG (liquefied natural gas) supplies from the US and weaker global demand.
Several of the ESB’s rivals have nonetheless announced energy price hikes.
The ESB’s retail arm, Electric Ireland, left its main electricity tariff unchanged earlier this month while cutting its gas prices by 4 per cent.
“Certainly the forward curves on wholesale gas are either stable or downward,” Mr Stapleton said, noting 80 per cent of the storage levels in Europe are full at the moment.
He also noted that the supply of LNG into Europe was about 25 per cent up on last year.
“There could be positive news for customers in the medium term,” he said. “It’s going in the right direction but maybe it’s not going down as fast as people would like,” Mr Stapleton said.
Wholesale and retail prices are still more than double what they were before the pandemic and still very exposed to geopolitical events.
Mr Stapleton said the roll-out of offshore wind energy projects was a potential “game-changer” in terms of reducing the relatively high cost of energy here.
He said the ESB and its Danish partner Orsted were planning to table a bid in the Government’s forthcoming auction for assets off the south coast.
If exploited to its full potential, Ireland could become an exporter of offshore wind energy, Mr Stapleton said.
The first farms are due to come on stream after 2030.
The ESB is a 50 per cent investor in two large offshore wind projects in Scotland including the 448MW Neart na Gaoithe farm off Scotland’s east coast.
The latter became fully operational during the period after being hit by delays and additional construction costs.
The company’s results showed its net debt fell slightly to €6.6 billion.
“ESB’s financial results for the first half of 2025 show a continuation of our robust performance. The fact that these results are substantially in line with what we reported over the same period last year is reflective of more stable global energy markets following an unprecedented period of upward volatility in energy prices,” Mr Stapleton said.
The period also saw investment of €1.3 billion in critical infrastructure, up €400 million on the same period in 2024.
Some €700 million of this was spent on network infrastructure to enhance resilience and add capacity for new housing, connect renewable generation and support the economy. More than €500 million was invested in projects that included onshore, offshore and solar renewable energy.
