Before you begin
What decides whether a smart tariff pays you
A headline night rate cannot tell you when your house uses power. Where you have no recorded split of your own, the comparison starts from the CRU's published Standard Smart Tariff load profile: the same profile every supplier and accredited price comparison site has had to use for an Estimated Annual Bill since April 2024, so a Verdanyx answer and the figure quoted beside a plan begin from the same assumption about your house.
Your own two figures come off a recent bill; the smart plan's four come off that plan's price list. Verdanyx keeps no tariff list, so the comparison is exactly as current as what you read.
Put every rate on the same basis — including VAT, after any discount you actually receive. A VAT-inclusive rate against a VAT-exclusive one is the one mistake that reliably reverses the answer.
If a smart meter has been in the house a few months, take the three yearly totals from myaccount.esbnetworks.ie. They are printed in kWh, which is what this asks for, and they replace every assumption below them.
Tick a flexible load only if it would genuinely move, and only if it does not already run overnight.
Reading the answer
Reading the day, night and peak split
The bands are set by ESB Networks, not by suppliers, so the windows are the same on every smart plan. Only the prices in them differ.
Without your own figures the comparison starts from the CRU's Standard Smart Tariff load profile, which is the profile a supplier's own Estimated Annual Bill is calculated on. It is a national average, and it includes homes with storage heating running overnight, so a house with busy evenings uses less at night than the profile assumes and the smart plan does worse than the estimate suggests.
The night share is the whole decision, and the break-even is the figure to argue with: if you cannot say whether the profile fits your house, you can usually still say whether you are above or below a stated percentage.
Common questions
Common smart tariff questions
Is a smart tariff cheaper than a standard rate?
It rests on how your use splits across the time bands and on the plan's prices. The result finds the night share where the plan and your current rate break even.
Get a result above and the full answer opens here.
Are the time bands the same on every supplier's smart plan?
Who sets the bands decides whether a new plan changes them. The comparison shows the hours of each band beside the share of your own year that falls in it.
Get a result above and the full answer opens here.
Where do I find my real day, night and peak totals?
Register at myaccount.esbnetworks.ie with the MPRN from your bill and a mobile number. The account shows the breakdown your meter has already recorded, in kWh, with the history ready to download.
How is this different from the Estimated Annual Bill a supplier shows me?
It starts from the same CRU profile, so the two agree when you change nothing. The difference is that this one lets you depart from that profile, by entering the totals your own meter recorded or by saying which loads you would move into the night band. How a household changes its behaviour is the assumption the CRU itself names as the limit of the Estimated Annual Bill.
Why does the tool not just tell me the cheapest plan?
That would mean Verdanyx maintaining every Irish supplier's tariff card, and a stale rate would quietly decide your answer. You enter the plan in front of you instead, so the comparison is exactly as current as the price list you read it from.