Energy Solutions for SME Businesses
Running a small or medium business in Ireland means every euro is accounted for—except, usually, the ones going out the door on electricity and gas. We read your actual consumption data, compare it against live pricing from our supplier panel, and tell you plainly whether there's a better arrangement available. Ready to see where you stand? Compare your business electricity rates in minutes.
How We Compare Your Rate
We check live pricing across our supplier panel against what you're paying now.
Who We Work With
Our focus is businesses consuming roughly 50,000 to 500,000 kWh of electricity a year. In practice that's a busy restaurant or pub, a small hotel, a retail unit or two, a light manufacturing operation, a gym, or a healthcare practice with imaging or sterilisation equipment.
That band matters because it's the awkward middle of the Irish market. Below it, you're close enough to domestic pricing that the comparison is straightforward. Above it, you're a large energy user with a dedicated account manager and a procurement process. In between, you're big enough that the numbers are material—often five figures a year—but small enough that no supplier is competing hard for your business, and nobody is checking whether the contract you signed three years ago still makes sense. That gap is the entire reason this business exists.
What's Actually on Your Bill
Most business owners look at the total and the unit rate. The unit rate is usually the smallest part of the story.
Unit rate (c/kWh)
What you pay per unit consumed. On a day/night or day/night/peak meter this is split across time bands, which means your consumption pattern changes your effective rate as much as the headline number does.
Standing charge
A fixed daily or monthly charge that applies whether you trade or not. For a low-consumption site this can be a larger share of the bill than the units. Two tariffs from the same supplier—one with a low standing charge and a high unit rate, one the reverse—will each be cheaper at different consumption levels, and there's a crossover point where they swap. Nobody tells you where it is.
DUoS charges
Distribution use of system, set by ESB Networks, not your supplier. These vary by your DG classification and, on larger meters, by when you use power. They're not negotiable, but which band you sit in sometimes is.
Capacity charge
On DG5 and DG6 meters, a charge based on your Maximum Import Capacity (MIC), not your usage. You pay for the capacity you've reserved whether you draw it or not.
PSO levy
A public service obligation charge, set annually and reset each 1 October. Above 30 kVA it's applied differently to how it is below.
VAT
Electricity and gas supply currently carries VAT at the 9% second reduced rate, extended to the end of 2030. If you're VAT-registered this is recoverable and shouldn't drive decisions; if you're not, it's a real cost.
The point of listing these isn't to be exhaustive. It's that four of the seven have nothing to do with the unit rate you were quoted, and three of them can be reduced without switching supplier at all.
Four Things That Quietly Cost Irish SMEs Money
Rollover contracts
This is the most common and the most expensive. Your fixed-term contract expires, you don't give notice, and the account rolls onto the supplier's default rate—typically well above what you'd be offered as a new customer, and frequently well above what you were paying the day before. Many businesses have been on rollover rates for years without knowing.
The flip side is that rollover is often the easiest position to fix. Depending on your supplier and contract terms, a rolled-over account may be month-to-month with a short notice period—commonly around twenty business days—and no exit fee at all. Being on a bad rate and being locked into it are different problems. We check which one you have before recommending anything.
An MIC you don't need
If your meter is DG5 or DG6—the boundary is 50 kVA of Maximum Import Capacity—you're paying a capacity charge every month based on a figure that was set when the connection was installed. Businesses change: kitchens are refitted, plant is replaced with more efficient units, a unit is subdivided. The MIC rarely gets revisited.
Where a site is consistently drawing well below its reserved capacity, right-sizing the MIC reduces the standing cost with no change of supplier and no change to how you operate. It needs care—you need twelve months of maximum demand data to be confident you won't clip a genuine peak, and reducing capacity you later need is expensive to reverse. But on a DG6 account it's often the single largest saving available, and it has nothing to do with switching.
A tariff shaped wrong for how you trade
A restaurant's load is concentrated in the evening. A bakery's is overnight and early morning. An office is flat, weekday, daytime. A hotel runs around the clock. Each of these sits differently against day/night/peak banding, and a nightsaver arrangement that transforms one business's bill does nothing for another's.
This is where a comparison based on your annual total goes wrong. Two businesses consuming an identical number of units can have materially different best-value tariffs. Reading half-hourly or time-band consumption rather than a single annual figure is the difference between a comparison and a guess.
Assumptions about classification that were never checked
DG classification drives DUoS and capacity charging. It's usually correct, but it isn't always current, and it isn't always what people assume—a low-consumption commercial premises can legitimately sit on a DG1 or DG2 classification, which is not an error to be corrected. Knowing which of these applies to you before quoting is basic diligence, and it's the kind of thing that gets skipped when a comparison is run off a postcode and an annual estimate.
What a Comparison Actually Looks Like
We don't publish savings percentages, because a percentage detached from a specific bill is a marketing number rather than an analytical one. What we can show is the mechanism.
A one cent per kWh difference in unit rate on a 120,000 kWh account is €1,200 a year. Two cents is €2,400. Three is €3,600.
That arithmetic is the whole comparison, and you can run it on your own bill in thirty seconds. What it doesn't tell you is whether a gap that size is actually available to you, or whether it's worth acting on. A three cent gap on that account is €3,600 a year — which is also roughly what a mid-size DG5 exit fee can cost. Move a year early and the first year's benefit goes entirely on leaving.
So the number that matters isn't the rate you're offered. It's the rate you're offered, minus the rate you're on, times your actual units, minus what it costs to get out of where you are—and the last term is the one most comparisons leave out.
Add the difference in standing charge over 365 days too—the arithmetic above is unit rate only. Every input in a real comparison is dated, sourced from a published rate card, and checkable against your own bill.
That's the format your report arrives in—not a headline number, but the arithmetic, with the assumptions visible so you can disagree with them.
What Working With Us Looks Like
You send us a recent bill. One full bill per meter is usually enough to start. It tells us your MPRN, DG classification, MIC, current rates, contract reference and billing cycle.
We ask for consumption history where it matters. For a straightforward single-meter comparison, the bill is sufficient. For MIC work or tariff-shape analysis, we'll request twelve months of data—we can request this on your behalf once you've signed a Letter of Authority.
We produce the analysis. Current position, available alternatives across our panel, the arithmetic behind each, exit fees and contract-end dates identified, and any non-switching savings such as MIC right-sizing flagged separately.
You decide. If switching makes sense, we handle the process end to end: notice to the outgoing supplier, contract and direct debit mandate with the incoming one, meter readings, and the go-live date. Supply is physically identical throughout—nothing changes at the meter, there's no interruption, and the wires and the network operator are the same before and after. The change is contractual.
We track your contract end date. Renewal dates are diarised and you'll hear from us before the notice window closes, not after it. The rollover problem above is preventable, and preventing it is most of what ongoing account management means.
How We're Paid
We're paid by the supplier, not by you. That takes one of two forms: a flat fee per meter registered, or a small per-unit amount included within the energy rate you're quoted. We'll tell you which applies on any recommendation we make.
This is worth being direct about, because it's the obvious question and most brokers don't answer it. Two consequences follow from it: our comparison covers the suppliers we hold agreements with, not the entire market, and we'll say so rather than claim otherwise; and where staying put is the right answer, we'll tell you that even though it pays us nothing.
When We'll Tell You Not to Switch
We'll recommend against switching when your existing contract is genuinely competitive, when the exit fee on your current agreement exceeds the benefit of moving, when you're mid-term and the notice window hasn't opened, or when the real saving available is a capacity or tariff-shape change on your existing account rather than a change of supplier.
A comparison that always concludes “switch” isn't a comparison. If the honest answer is that you're fine as you are, that's a useful thing to know once, in writing, with a date on it—and it costs you nothing to find out.
SMEs We Work With
Some sectors need more than a standard SME comparison. Multi-site operators, nursing homes and residential care with 24/7 load profiles, and businesses above roughly 500,000 kWh sit in different territory—see Large Energy Users and Property Managers.
Pubs & Restaurants
Retail Units
Professional Services
Small Hotels & B&Bs
Cafes & Coffee Shops
Small Manufacturers
Gyms & Fitness
Healthcare Practices
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