Guide
The cheap window on an EV tariff is worth more than the cheap rate.
Irish EV plans are usually compared on the overnight unit rate. The window that rate applies to ranges from two hours to six, and for some households that matters more than the cents.
The windows
Two hours at one end, six at the other.
These are the discounted charging windows currently published by the main Irish suppliers. The hours are structural and change rarely. The rates attached to them move often, so they are not listed here.
| Supplier | Plan | Window | Length |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electric Ireland | Night Boost | 02:00 to 04:00 | 2 hours |
| Bord Gáis Energy | Smart EV | 02:00 to 05:00 | 3 hours |
| Flogas | EV Night Charge | 02:00 to 05:00 | 3 hours |
| Energia | EV Smart Drive | 02:00 to 06:00 | 4 hours |
| SSE Airtricity | Smart EV Max | 23:00 to 05:00 | 6 hours |
Charging a car
For the car alone, even two hours is usually enough.
A standard home charger in Ireland runs at 7.4kW. That puts roughly 15 kWh into the car in a two hour window and about 44 kWh in a six hour one.
Average driving here works out at something like 8 to 9 kWh a day. So even the shortest window covers more than a normal day’s driving, and most people will never notice the difference.
Where it does bite is a deep charge from near empty, or charging on a three pin cable at 2.3kW, which turns a three hour window into about 7 kWh.
Charging a battery too
Add a home battery and the short windows start to bind.
Home battery inverters typically charge at 3 to 5kW rather than 7.4kW. A 10 kWh battery can therefore take two to three hours on its own, which is most or all of a short window before the car has drawn anything.
Once you are filling a battery and a car in the same slot, a six hour window at a higher rate can beat a two or three hour window at a lower one, simply because you can physically get the kWh in. The cheapest rate you cannot use is not a saving.
The trap
A very cheap band usually means a very expensive rest of the day.
EV plans price the rest of the day above a standard tariff. That is how they work: the discounted band is paid for by everything outside it. So the plan only pays off if you can genuinely shift most of your usage into the window.
This is worth taking seriously. Pinergy withdrew its EV Night Time tariff from sale in May 2026 and raised the night rate on it substantially. That plan had one of the cheapest bands in the market and one of the highest rates outside it.
How to check your own
Work out the kWh you can shift, not the cents you might save.
Take your charger’s power in kW, multiply by the window length in hours, and subtract whatever a battery would take first. That is the most you can buy at the cheap rate. Everything else in the house is on the day rate, which on these plans is higher than it would be elsewhere.
If you have a smart meter, you can download your own half-hourly data free from ESB Networks and see how much of your usage already falls inside each window before you commit to anything.
Windows above are as published by each supplier and were last checked in July 2026. Suppliers change plans without notice, so confirm the current terms before switching.