Difference in standing charge for a night saver metre

I’m looking to switch to Electric Ireland. I was just curious why is there a big difference in the standing charge between a night saver metre and a normal metre. For example if you choose Value saver (direct Debit and online billing) for a standard meter the standing charge for rural is €163.99 and if you choose Value saver night (direct Debit and online billing) for a night saver meter the standing charge is €213.78. That’s almost €50 in the difference. Why is that?

I understand why it’s different for rural as it costs more to supply. Also I’m aware it’s the same for most companies I’ve checked

Electric Ireland: David

Hi Suresanders,

Thanks for your post.

The reason the standing charge is higher for customers on a Nightsaver tariff is related to the reason that the day unit rate for Nightsaver customers is also (slightly) higher than the standard 24hr unit rate.

The CER (Commision for Energy Regulation) explain this as follows:

On the 1st November 2007, the CER launched the Single Electricity Market, (SEM). In the SEM, wholesale electricity supplies are bought by suppliers from an electricity Pool through which the bulk of electricity generation in the island of Ireland is sold. The price of electricity in the Pool varies in each half hour depending upon the type of generation that produces the electricity supply and its associated fuel costs. The cost of generation during day hours is higher than the cost of generation during night hours. Therefore, the day rate is slightly higher than the single rate on the 24 hour tariff as the day rate reflects the higher cost of generation during day hours only, whereas the single rate recovers the cost of generation during both day and lower priced night hours. The night units are charged at less than the day rate, incentivising customers to be more energy efficient by shifting their energy consumption away from the more expensive peak high demand day times to night time hours. There is a higher standing charge for day/night tariff to reflect the higher underlying non-energy costs such as network operation and maintenance, customer billing and services associated with providing this tariff.

With the clocks going forward recently, we posted the following information here on Boards for Nightsaver customers, which I hope you find useful. If you would like to view the unit rates for each of our price plans, including our Nightsaver plans, please visit the price plan section of our website. 

If you have any other questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Regards,
David