Best NightSaver electricity in Ireland

A NightSaver meter — meter configuration MCC02 on your bill — charges two prices: a cheap night rate from 23:00 to 08:00 and a dearer day rate from 08:00 to 23:00. If your home runs storage heaters, an immersion on a timer, or an EV charging overnight through a legacy night meter, the right day/night plan can beat any 24-hour tariff. The wrong one quietly costs you more than the plan you left.

This ranking orders suppliers by one stated criterion: computed year-1 cost at the CRU typical 4,200 kWh with a 40% night / 60% day split, urban (DG1) standing charges, PSO levy and 9% VAT included. The formula is printed below, so you can rerun it with your own split. We also show the break-even night share for every supplier — the percentage of your units that must run 23:00–08:00 before NightSaver beats that supplier’s own 24-hour deal.

Two of the nine suppliers we cover are excluded rather than silently dropped: Bord Gáis Energy published no day/night rates for new sign-ups when we checked its tariff and plan pages on 28 August 2026 (24-hour and smart plans only), and Yuno Energy has no NightSaver plan — its discount plans require a smart meter and its standard plan is 24-hour. Every rate below was read on the remaining seven suppliers’ own sites the same day. matched.ie is not a CRU-accredited price-comparison site; for the accredited comparators, see cru.ie.

How did we rank these NightSaver plans?

Suppliers publish NightSaver Estimated Annual Bills using their own assumed day/night splits, which makes their EABs hard to compare. So we computed every year-1 figure on the same basis:

All rates inc VAT, urban. The two PAYG rows add the prepayment service charge bill-pay customers never pay. *Pinergy’s unit rates rise 7.6% from 14 September 2026 (standing charges unchanged), which adds about €121 a year at this split. SSE’s year-2 figure uses its standard Smartsaver rates with the 4% direct-debit discount; Electric Ireland’s uses its standard NightSaver rates (its terms move you to the ValueReward plan at term end). Community Power, Flogas Standard Variable, Energia’s undiscounted Day/Night and both PAYG plans have no teaser, so year 1 and year 2 match — until a variable-rate change lands.

Where a supplier prints its own NightSaver EAB we show it in the last column as a cross-check; the small gaps against our figures come from the supplier assuming a slightly more day-heavy split than 40%. SSE’s €1,415 and Community Power’s €1,544 are their published figures; Electric Ireland, Flogas and Energia publish no NightSaver EAB, so the dash means exactly that — not a missing verification.

What does each supplier charge at night versus by day?

The spread matters as much as the night rate itself. Electric Ireland has the cheapest verified night rate at 16.83c on its year-1 discount, but SSE’s far lower day rate (29.17c against 34.12c) wins the total at any realistic split. Energia’s undiscounted 46.76c day rate is the dearest day-time electricity in this table — its day/night plan carries no new-customer discount at all.

Unit rates inc 9% VAT, urban, verified on each supplier’s site 28 August 2026. Green bars are the 23:00–08:00 night rate; rust bars are the 08:00–23:00 day rate. Bars are scaled to Energia’s 46.76c day rate. Year-1 discounted rates shown where the supplier offers one on a day/night meter (SSE, Electric Ireland); standard rates otherwise.

What share of your usage must run at night for NightSaver to win?

NightSaver only pays if enough of your load actually sits inside 23:00–08:00, because you accept a higher day rate and (at most suppliers) a higher standing charge in exchange for the cheap night units. The break-even share for any supplier is:

break-even night share = [4,200 × (day rate − 24h rate) + (NightSaver standing − 24h standing)] ÷ [4,200 × (day rate − night rate)] — rates in euro per kWh. Below that share, that supplier’s own 24-hour deal is cheaper; above it, NightSaver wins and keeps winning as your night share climbs.

Note what the comparisons are: for Community Power, Prepay Power and Pinergy it is standard-versus-standard, a clean like-for-like. For SSE, Electric Ireland, Flogas and Energia we compare the day/night plan against the discounted 24-hour plan a switcher would actually take in year 1 — because that is the real alternative on the table when you are choosing. On SSE and Electric Ireland the discount also applies to the day/night rates, which is why their break-evens stay low.

Why are NightSaver standing charges higher?

A day/night meter costs the network more to serve, and ESB Networks’ charges for the MCC02 configuration are passed through — so most suppliers charge more per year before you use a single unit, and rural (DG2) homes pay more again. Two exceptions in this table: Community Power charges the same standing charge on both meter types, and Flogas prints one €305.68 standing charge on its Standard Variable card with no separate day/night figure and no urban/rural split.

All figures inc VAT per year, verified 28 August 2026; dashes mean the supplier does not publish that figure, not that it is zero. The premium is real money: SSE’s day/night meter costs €75.12 a year more than its 24-hour meter in an urban home before any usage, Electric Ireland’s €77.81, Energia’s €66.96, and Prepay Power’s a hefty €113.60 — that premium is the first thing your night units have to earn back, which is exactly what the break-even formula above prices in. Rural homes on NightSaver pay the most standing charge in the market: €412.82 at SSE and €422.31 at Energia.

I have a smart meter — am I still on NightSaver?

Quite possibly, and this trips people up in both directions. When ESB Networks swaps your old day/night meter for a smart meter, your billing configuration does not change: the smart meter is simply configured as MCC02 and keeps recording day and night registers exactly as before. You stay on NightSaver rates and windows until you actively sign a smart tariff. A smart meter is hardware; a smart tariff is a contract — one does not imply the other.

That cuts two ways. It means storage-heating and night-immersion homes can keep a genuinely good NightSaver setup after the meter swap — every supplier in our top three serves smart meters left in MCC02. It also means people who assume the new meter “automatically” put them on cheap smart rates are actually still paying their old plan, sometimes a lapsed year-2 one. Check the meter configuration line on your bill: MCC01 is 24-hour, MCC02 is NightSaver, MCC12 and MCC16 are smart configurations.

One more wrinkle worth knowing before you sign anything: suppliers’ tariff sheets show the night window shifting with the clocks — 23:00–08:00 in winter and 00:00–09:00 in summer on Electric Ireland’s and SSE’s current sheets. A timer set once in January can be an hour wrong all summer, silently moving your immersion into day rate.

When should you move to a smart time-of-use tariff instead?

Moving from MCC02 to a smart tariff (MCC12 or MCC16) is effectively one-way — suppliers state that once you are billed on half-hourly smart data you cannot go back to the old day/night configuration. So treat the move as a decision, not an experiment. The smart plan structure adds a third price: a peak rate, typically 17:00–19:00 on weekdays, that is the dearest electricity on the sheet — Bord Gáis’s undiscounted smart peak reaches 54.11c/kWh in our dataset, and Yuno’s standard smart peak is 48.13c.

• Stay on NightSaver if your load is genuinely night-heavy — storage heat, immersion on the night window, an EV on a legacy meter — and your daytime use is modest. A 40%+ night share on SSE’s or Electric Ireland’s discounted day/night rates is hard to beat.
• Consider smart time-of-use if you can also dodge the evening peak: Energia’s Smart Data plan prices nights at 16.91c with a €1,382 published year-1 EAB, and Community Power’s smart night rate matches its day/night 21.24c. See cheapest electricity for how those plans rank overall.
• EV at home? Dedicated EV windows go far below any NightSaver night rate — Flogas’s EV window is 9.96c and Bord Gáis’s 8.98c (02:00–05:00) on current cards — but they need a smart meter and a peak-heavy household can lose the gain at 18:00. The full maths lives in best EV tariff.
• Cooking dinner at 17:30 every day? Stay off half-hourly smart plans entirely, or pick one with a flat rate. The peak window sits exactly on family cooking time.

Whichever way you go, the switch itself is the same 2–4 week process — MPRN from the bill, one meter reading, the new supplier does the rest. Steps in how to switch energy supplier.

The dishwasher-at-eight-o’clock trap

The most common NightSaver mistake is running the “night” appliances in the evening. On MCC02, 20:00 is day rate — night does not start until 23:00. A dishwasher, dryer and washing machine cycled between dinner and bedtime all bill at the day rate, which on a NightSaver plan is higher than the same supplier’s 24-hour rate: Flogas’s day rate is 44.00c against its 31.68c discounted 24-hour rate, Energia’s 46.76c against 29.86c. A day-heavy home on a NightSaver plan pays more twice — once on the inflated day rate, once on the higher standing charge.

The fix is delay-start buttons and the 23:00 boundary. Set appliances to finish, not start, inside the window if their cycle is short; put the immersion and EV charger on timers that follow the seasonal window shift; and re-read your two registers after a month to see the split move. If, after honestly shifting what you can, your night share still sits under your supplier’s break-even in the table above, the answer is not more discipline — it is a 24-hour plan or a smart tariff that matches how you actually live. And whatever meter you are on, the month-13 cliff works the same: SSE’s NightSaver jumps from €1,407 to about €1,796 at this split if you drift onto standard rates.

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.

About the author

Conor Ryan

Energy Switching Analyst

Conor Ryan has tracked Irish gas and electricity prices, tariffs and switching since 2019. He builds matched.ie’s energy comparison tools and tests how smart meters and time-of-use plans affect household bills.

7+ years analysing Irish energy marketsCertified in Energy Efficiency (SEAI) and Electricity SupplyFocus on SSE Airtricity, Electric Ireland, Energia and Bord GáisBased in Limerick, covers domestic and small-business tariffs