Charging

EZO raises €150 million for 3,000 UK and Ireland charge points — €50,000 each

Miriam September 18, 2026 Updated: October 2, 2026 4 min read

Row of AC charging posts on a city street with an electric car plugged in under overcast light. AI-generated illustration.

Irish charging provider EZO has closed a €150 million senior debt facility to design, install, operate and maintain more than 3,000 charge points with a combined capacity of over 100 MW across Ireland and the UK. The headline is the money. The more useful figure is €50,000 per charge point — and the 33 kW average that comes with it.

What €150 million actually buys

Divide the facility by the target and you get a very specific number: 150,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = €50,000 per charge point. Divide the power by the point count and you get another: 100 MW ÷ 3,000 = roughly 33 kW average per point. That second number tells you nearly everything about what is being built. A portfolio averaging 33 kW cannot be made of ultra-rapid chargers. Even a generous mix — 10% DC at 150 kW, 90% AC at 22 kW — lands at about 35 kW. For the average to sit at 33 kW, the vast majority of those 3,000 points will be AC: destination charging at council car parks, park-and-ride sites, leisure centres, libraries and on-street bays. Note the contrast with EZO's own UK deal from June — a £176 million, 15-year contract to deploy and operate infrastructure across four Midlands councils, adding 250 rapid and ultra-rapid chargers for more than two million residents. That works out at £704,000 per charger, roughly sixteen times the blended cost of a point under this new facility. Different products, different jobs — but the price gap shows how sharply the economics of a 22 kW post and a 350 kW stall diverge.

The financing structure is the actual story

The money comes from a consortium including Aberdeen Investments and Standard Life, and EZO describes the structure as unusual for the sector. Revenues generated by the financed infrastructure are ringfenced to repay the debt over seven years, with the build backed by long-term concessions with public-sector partners. "The backing of our investment partners gives us the financial strength to deliver on those commitments," said EZO CEO Ollie Chatten. Conor Kelly, CEO of majority shareholder Rubicon Capital Management, called it "a significant vote of confidence in EZO" and expects the framework to become the preferred way of financing this kind of collateral. Worth pausing on the mismatch, though. A seven-year amortisation schedule is being laid against concessions that run for fifteen to twenty years. That only works if utilisation ramps fast. Which brings us to the revenue forecast.

What €1 billion in electricity sales over 20 years implies

EZO estimates the network could generate more than €1 billion in electricity sales over 20 years, with part of the revenue shared with the public sector. Run the numbers: €1bn ÷ 20 years = €50 million a year across the network. Divided by 3,000 points, that is €16,667 per point per year. At an average retail price of roughly 45 euro cents per kWh — in the region of what public AC charging costs in Ireland and the UK — that implies around 37 MWh sold per point annually, or about 100 kWh per day. For a 22 kW AC post, 100 kWh a day is roughly 4.6 hours at full power. That is a perfectly respectable utilisation for a well-sited destination charger. For a 350 kW unit it would be under twenty minutes of use a day — commercially hopeless. The forecast and the power budget agree with each other, and both say the same thing: this is an AC network with a DC minority riding along.

Why that is probably the right call

The long-standing complaint in both markets is not the absence of motorway rapids — it is the absence of somewhere to plug in for three hours while you shop, work or sleep. We documented the DC end of that spectrum in our real-world charging test of the Mercedes CLA 350 4Matic, which went from 10 to 80% in 26 minutes. That is a genuinely good result, and it is also irrelevant to the driver who has no home charger and parks on a residential street. The fleet-side version of the same logic is visible in Germany, where BGL and Depotcharge opened truck depots to other fleets — again, slow power where vehicles sit still, not fast power where they do not. The risk here is execution cost, not concept. AC points are cheap to install but generate small revenue per session, and each site still needs a grid connection, payment routing, planning permission and a maintenance contract. EZO's own UK rollout pace will be the test.

What it costs the driver

Our own supercharger database covers 483 locations across Europe with per-kWh prices, and the spread between the cheapest and most expensive sites is wide enough to change your route — see the cheapest locations list before you plan a long run. If you want to know what a new public AC point will actually cost you against your home tariff, run your own numbers through our charging cost calculator. The practical takeaway: expect the next wave of UK and Ireland charge points to be slow, plentiful and located where cars already park. That will not fix a motorway corridor. It will fix a Tuesday night.

What remains open

EZO has not published a site list, a split between AC and DC, or a delivery schedule for the first tranche. Nor has it said whether the 100 MW figure is connected capacity or installed nameplate — a distinction that matters enormously once grid connection queues are involved. Until those are known, the €150 million is a commitment, not a map.

Source: https://www.electrive.com/2026/09/17/ezo-secures-e150-million-to-expand-uk-and-ireland-charging-networks/