Dynamic pricing is the biggest change to hit Irish electricity since the smart meter, and from 1 June 2026 the large suppliers are required to offer a dynamic plan. Instead of a fixed unit rate (or simple day/night bands), a dynamic tariff updates the price you pay every 30 minutes, tracking the wholesale market. Crucially, the prices for all 48 half-hour slots are published a day in advance, so you (or an automated system) can see exactly when power will be cheap or dear and shift your usage accordingly.
Your bill splits into a fixed standing charge, a fixed base unit rate, and the variable "dynamic" portion that moves with the wholesale price — and that dynamic portion is capped (currently 50c/kWh) to protect you from extreme spikes. On windy overnight periods the dynamic rate can fall to a couple of cent; on a cold weekday evening it can run high. The catch is that most of your bill is actually fixed network and supplier costs, so the savings come from aggressively load-shifting the genuinely variable slice — charging the battery, the EV and the immersion in the cheapest windows.
For a solar-and-battery home this is potentially powerful: you can fill the battery when wholesale prices crater and run the house off it through expensive periods, on top of your daytime solar. But it rewards automation and discipline — if you can't reliably move load to the cheap slots, a good fixed EV/night tariff may still beat it. You'll need a smart meter capable of half-hourly reads with a strong signal. The honest position right now: it's new, the data on real-world household savings is thin, and you don't have to switch — so it's reasonable to watch the published rates for a few weeks before committing.