Whether peak applies at weekends depends on your supplier.
The hours are the same everywhere, 17:00 to 19:00. The days are not. Pinergy charges peak every day and says so three times on its rate table. Bord Gáis charges it Monday to Friday. This is the reason the same question gets opposite answers online, and both answers are correct for the person giving them.
The bands
Day, night and peak on a standard smart tariff.
A three-band smart tariff in Ireland prices the day from 08:00 to 23:00, night from 23:00 to 08:00, and carves a peak band out of the day between 17:00 and 19:00. Those hours are consistent across every supplier we track. The peak band is the expensive one, typically around a fifth above the day rate.
Who charges it when
One supplier says weekdays. The rest do not.
Pinergy is the most explicit. Its rate table reads “Day Unit Price 8am to 11pm Everyday excl Peak Times”, “Night Unit Price 11pm to 8am Everyday” and “Peak Unit Price 5pm to 7pm Everyday”. Three statements, no ambiguity.
Bord Gáis is the exception. Its rate table labels the row “Peak Rate Mon to Fri”, on both its urban and rural tables. A Bord Gáis customer genuinely is not charged the peak rate on a Saturday evening.
Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity, Energia and Flogas publish the peak band as a bare time range with no day qualifier, and ESB Networks describes the standard structure the same way. On the ordinary reading, that means every day.
Why this is hard to check
A supplier’s summary page and its rate table can disagree.
Bord Gáis’s plan summary shows “Urban Peak units (5pm to 7pm)” with no mention of weekdays. The full rate table for the same plan says “Peak Rate Mon to Fri”. Both are on their site, and only one of them tells you the whole term.
If you are checking your own plan, find the full rate table rather than the plan card. The summary is written to sell the plan; the rate table is the document you are billed against, and it is the only one that carries the whole term.
A separate thing people confuse this with
Weekday-only bands exist elsewhere, and they are discounts.
Pinergy’s Working from Home tariff has a cheaper rate from 09:00 to 17:00 on weekdays only. That is a real weekday restriction on a real band, but it is a discount window rather than a peak, and the same supplier charges peak every day.
So “my plan has a weekday-only band” and “my peak applies every day” can both be true at once, which is another reason the forum arguments never resolve.
What to do with this
Assume seven days unless your rate table says otherwise.
Most suppliers charge the peak rate every evening, so shifting the dishwasher, the washing machine or car charging out of 17:00 to 19:00 at weekends is the safe default. Being wrong in that direction costs you a little inconvenience. Being wrong the other way costs money at exactly the hours a household is most likely to be cooking.
If you are with Bord Gáis, the weekend evenings are day rate and you can stop worrying about them. Check the rate table for your own plan rather than relying on a general description, including this one.
Our electricity prices page costs every three-band plan against the band definition its own supplier publishes, so a Bord Gáis plan is not charged a weekend peak it does not levy.
Band times and days above are as published on each supplier’s own rate tables and were last checked in August 2026. Suppliers change plans without notice.