An EV turns your electricity account into your fuel account. Charge a typical commuter car at home — call it 10 kWh a night, roughly 250 kWh a month — and you have added about 3,000 kWh a year to your bill, most of it shiftable to whatever hours your supplier sells cheapest. That is exactly what EV tariffs are for: a super-low window in the small hours (8.59c to 13.86c per kWh on the plans we verified this week) instead of the 34c to 44c you would pay for the same units on a 24-hour rate.
This ranking orders suppliers by one stated test: what 250 kWh of overnight charging costs per month inside each verified EV or night window — a straight formula, 250 kWh × the window rate — and then sanity-checks the number every EV ad leaves out: the rate the rest of your house pays at 6pm. A 8.59c window is real money saved; so is a 45.38c peak if you cook dinner on it. Both sides are priced below.
Two of the nine suppliers we track are missing for honest reasons. Pinergy no longer sells an EV tariff to new customers — its residential EV page now sells charger installation, not a rate. Prepay Power has no EV window at all; its smart prepay time-of-use night rate (21.60c) is priced nowhere near a true EV window. Neither is ranked.
How did we rank these EV tariffs?
The criterion is the monthly cost of the example EV load — 250 kWh × the cheapest verified EV/night window rate, VAT included. We only used a rate if we could read it on the supplier's own site this week, or if it carries a same-week verification date in our dataset. Where a supplier does not publish something — window hours, a peak rate, a year-1 bill — you see a dash, not a guess.
Per single charge, the same maths reads: 10 kWh costs 86c in Yuno's window, 94c on Energia EV Smart Drive, about €1.00 on Flogas, €1.09 on Electric Ireland's boost, €1.25 on Bord Gáis, €1.39 on SSE — and €2.12 on Community Power's ordinary smart night rate, which is the honest benchmark for what "no EV window" costs an EV owner.
The window rate is not the whole verdict, though. The cards above also carry each plan's peak rate and year-1 Estimated Annual Bill where the supplier publishes one, because — as the next sections show — a household picks a whole tariff, not three hours of it.
Which suppliers have a real EV window right now?
Six suppliers sell a tariff with a genuine EV or boost window this week; Community Power offers a plain smart night rate instead. Windows differ more than rates do: SSE's runs six hours from 11pm, Electric Ireland's just two hours from 2am. On a standard ~7 kW home charger, a two-hour window caps you at roughly 14 kWh per night at the boost rate — fine for daily commuting, tight for filling a big battery from near-empty.
| Supplier · plan | EV window | EV rate | Night rate | Peak rate | Meter needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yuno · EV Variable Smart | 02:00–06:00 | 8.59c | 21.46c | 45.38c | Smart, half-hourly |
| Energia · EV Smart Drive | 02:00–06:00 | 9.42c | —* | —* | Smart, half-hourly |
| Flogas · Smart EV Night Charge | —† | 9.96c | 24.66c | 40.95c | Smart, half-hourly |
| Electric Ireland · Home Electric+ Night Boost | 02:00–04:00 | 10.88c | 18.54c | none (day 37.60c) | Smart |
| Bord Gáis · Smart EV Plus | 02:00–05:00 | 12.52c | —* | —* | Smart, half-hourly |
| SSE Airtricity · Smart EV Max | 23:00–05:00 | 13.86c | n/a (two bands) | none (18h 38.58c) | Smart |
| Community Power · Smart ToU (no EV window) | night 23:00–08:00 | — | 21.24c | 39.84c | Smart ToU |
All rates are cent per kWh including 9% VAT, read on each supplier's own site this week. * Energia and Bord Gáis do not print the full discounted rate card for their EV plans on the public pages we could verify — Energia's published standard EV Smart Drive Plus card runs day 43.26c / night 26.65c / peak 56.76c, which is what the discount lapses onto. † Flogas prints every rate on the plan card (including the 9.96c EV rate) but not the window's clock hours — not verified this week, so we will not guess them. Ring Flogas and get the hours in writing before you sign.
Two structural points. SSE's Smart EV Max is a simple two-band tariff — six cheap hours, eighteen at 38.58c — so there is no separate peak ambush, and its 23:00 start suits anyone who cannot always delay charging to 2am. And Electric Ireland's Night Boost is really a NightSaver-shaped smart plan (18.54c from 11pm) with a two-hour boost inside it — good if your charger can be timed precisely, wasteful if it cannot.
What meter do you need for an EV tariff?
Every plan in the table needs a smart meter, and the true EV-window plans need it reporting half-hourly — the configuration ESB Networks calls MCC12 (MCC16 is the day/night/peak variant). Flogas states the requirement plainly on its plan card: half-hourly electricity data is a condition of the tariff, and if your meter's communications signal (its CTF level) drops below what the tariff needs, you get moved to the nearest equivalent smart plan. Dynamic tariffs are stricter again — they need the full comms level, CTF 4.
Three consequences before you sign:
- Moving to a smart time-of-use tariff is one-way. Once the meter is reconfigured to MCC12/MCC16, suppliers cannot put you back on a single 24-hour register. You can still switch supplier freely — but to smart tariffs.
- A smart meter is not automatically a smart tariff. Millions of swapped meters still bill on 24-hour or NightSaver registers. You must actively sign up to an EV plan; nobody moves you onto the cheap window by default.
- A legacy NightSaver meter (MCC02) does not qualify. Its night register runs 23:00–08:00 and it cannot see a 2am–5am sub-window. More on when that is actually fine below.
If you are not sure what configuration your meter is on, your MPRN and meter details are on any electricity bill, and ESB Networks can confirm the meter type registered at the address. The switching mechanics — MPRN, cooling-off, the fact your supply never cuts — are in how to switch energy supplier.
Does the cheap EV rate survive the rest of the house?
Here is the sum the ads skip. The example EV load is 250 kWh a month — but a typical Irish home burns around 350 kWh a month (CRU's 4,200 kWh a year) on top of that, and on an EV tariff a big slice of it lands in the dear bands. The car charges at 8.59c; the oven, immersion and washing machine do not.
The EV rate is only about a third of your bill — check the peak. At the example loads, the car is 250 kWh of roughly 600 kWh a month. On Yuno's EV smart plan the other 350 kWh price at 21.46c–45.38c depending on when you use them. Fifty units a month cooked on a 45c peak costs €22.50 — the entire saving the 8.59c window earned you.
Verified peak rates make the point: Yuno's EV smart peak is 45.38c (its standard smart plan's peak after the discount year is 48.13c, 5–7pm); Prepay Power's smart time-of-use peak is 46.81c (17:00–19:00); Bord Gáis's undiscounted smart-standard peak is 54.11c Monday to Friday; and the standard card an Energia EV customer lapses onto lists a 56.76c peak. Those are the 46c-to-57c evening rates a cheap 2am window has to out-earn.
The other half of that reality is the year-2 cliff. Most of these EV plans are 12-month discounted contracts; the standard cards they revert to carry higher rates in every band. Only some suppliers print a year-1 EAB for EV plans at CRU typical usage (they exclude the car): Bord Gáis Smart EV Plus €1,575, Flogas EV Night Charge €1,576.95, SSE Smart EV Max €1,524.27 urban, Yuno's EV smart card €1,713.57. None of them publishes a year-2 EV EAB we could verify this week — set a month-11 reminder and re-shop, exactly as year 1 vs year 2 explains.
Are dynamic tariffs the cheapest way to charge an EV?
Sometimes — and that is the honest full answer. Since June 2026 the CRU requires larger suppliers to offer a standard dynamic contract, so Electric Ireland, Energia (Smart Track), Bord Gáis (Smart Dynamic), Yuno and Prepay Power all sell household electricity priced half-hourly from the day-ahead wholesale market. Prices for tomorrow publish today; on windy nights the small hours can be very cheap, and a smart charger that reads those prices can chase them automatically.
But a dynamic tariff is a price structure, not a discount. There is no annual bill to print because your cost depends entirely on when you draw power — which is why no supplier publishes an EAB for one and neither do we. The dynamic component on Yuno's and Prepay Power's plans is capped at 50c/kWh (the cap sits on the dynamic part, not necessarily your all-in unit rate), Bord Gáis lists a 16.73c base rate plus the half-hourly price and itself flags the plan as financially risky, and the standing charges run higher than ordinary plans — Yuno's dynamic card carries €397.39 a year urban.
The practical rule: dynamic suits an EV household with a genuinely smart charger and shiftable load — charge when the half-hourly price dips, avoid the expensive evenings. The trap is the opposite household: a dumb charger on a dynamic or peak-heavy plan, plugged in at 6pm when wholesale prices spike, is the dearest way to run an EV in Ireland. If you will not automate or babysit your charging times, a fixed EV window from the table above is the safer buy. And on a dynamic plan you also need the meter's comms at CTF 4 — the top signal level — which not every smart meter achieves.
Should you charge on a legacy NightSaver meter instead?
Plenty of EV owners already have a NightSaver (MCC02) day/night meter, whose night register runs 23:00–08:00 — nine hours, against the two-to-six-hour EV windows above. The rates are higher than an EV window but far lower than day rates: Community Power's night rate is 21.24c, Electric Ireland's Night Boost plan prices ordinary night units at 18.54c, and Yuno's day/night card lists night at 23.03c.
The trade-off is width versus depth. Nine hours at ~21c beats three hours at ~12c for anyone charging two cars, running storage heating, or unable to time-shift into a tight window. One car and a timed charger flips it: 250 kWh at 9.42c–12.52c in a true EV window costs €23–€31 a month, the same units at 21c–24c cost €53–€60. A smart meter can also be left in the MCC02 configuration — so if you are on NightSaver today, you can keep it after a meter swap, or move to a smart EV tariff (one-way, remember) when the maths says so. The full night-rate comparison lives in best NightSaver electricity.
How do you pick the right EV tariff?
- Confirm your meter first. Smart, half-hourly-capable, and CTF 4 if you want dynamic. No smart meter yet means no EV window — request the upgrade before shopping, not after signing.
- Match the window to your charger. A ~7 kW charger delivers roughly 7 kWh per window hour. Two hours (Electric Ireland) suits a commuter top-up; six hours (SSE) suits big batteries and forgetful humans.
- Price the whole house, not the car. Multiply your evening-peak usage by the plan's peak rate before celebrating the window rate. Evening-heavy homes often do better on SSE's no-peak structure — or a flat smart rate from the cheapest electricity ranking.
- Set the charger's timer to the exact hours. A charge that starts at 1am on a 2am window buys an hour of 21c–26c night units for nothing.
- Diary month 11. Every discounted EV plan here reverts to a dearer standard card; the 56.76c peak on Energia's standard EV card is what drifting costs.
- Check the exit fee if you might move or re-shop. €50 per fuel at Electric Ireland, Bord Gáis, Energia, SSE and Flogas; €100 per fuel at Yuno.
One transparency note: matched.ie is not a CRU-accredited price-comparison site — the accredited comparators are listed on cru.ie. We rank retailers from their published tariff cards and tell you exactly what we could and could not verify, and our energy matcher will shortlist a supplier fit in 30 seconds.
Keep reading
- Best energy in Ireland: the flagship supplier ranking.
- How to switch energy supplier: MPRN, GPRN, cooling-off — supply never cuts.
- Year 1 vs year 2 energy prices: the discount cliff every ranking here prices in.
- Find your energy: 30-second matcher.
