Electricity in Georgia costs five tetri more a unit than it did in March — and that is now the standing rate

From 1 April 2026 the energy regulator raised household electricity by five tetri per kilowatt-hour and commercial supply by roughly four to six tetri. In Tbilisi, where Telmico supplies the network, household bands run from about 20.0 to 28.5 tetri per kilowatt-hour and commercial bands from about 27.8 to 35.3. In the regions, supplied by EP Georgia Supply, household bands run from about 19.7 to 28.2 tetri and commercial from about 30.3 to 35.7. The band you fall into depends on how much you consume in the month, which is why a short-let flat with air conditioning running through August lands in a different band from the same flat in February.

Two reasons were given. The first is that Georgia buys a growing share of its electricity abroad, and the cost of that imported power has gone up. The second is capital spending: roughly two billion lari is earmarked for rehabilitating the distribution network, and tariffs are the mechanism that funds it. Worth keeping in proportion, though — set against 2023, the net movement is only about two tetri, because tariffs were cut by three tetri across 2024 and 2025 before this rise put most of that back.

Five tetri a kilowatt-hour sounds trivial until it meets a summer air-conditioning load or an electric water heater in a mountain guesthouse. The exposure is not evenly spread: a long-let tenant paying their own bills absorbs it directly, while a short-let host who advertises a nightly price with everything included absorbs it themselves. If your listing bundles utilities, this is the year to check last summer's actual meter readings against the new bands rather than carrying forward a per-night cost assumption from 2024.

Tariffs are published by the energy and water regulator and are the authoritative version, band by band and supplier by supplier. Since consumption bands, not a single flat price, decide what you pay, the only reliable way to budget a property is to take twelve months of meter readings for that specific unit and price each month against the band it actually falls in. A yearly average applied flat across the calendar will understate the summer months and overstate the winter ones.