Is Electricity Cheaper at Night?

Yes — but only on the right tariff

This is the bit that trips people up. Cheaper night-time electricity isn't a feature of the National Grid or of electricity itself — it's a feature of specific tariffs that suppliers design to shift demand into low-usage overnight hours. If you're on a standard single-rate variable or fixed tariff, your unit rate is identical whether you run the washing machine at 2pm or 2am.

To actually get cheaper electricity at night, you need to be on a time-of-use tariff: Economy 7, Economy 10, an EV tariff, a heat pump tariff, or a dynamic/agile tariff that tracks wholesale prices half-hourly. Each of these defines a specific off-peak window during which the unit rate drops well below the peak rate — and a corresponding peak rate that's often higher than a standard flat tariff to compensate.

Rates change — always check the supplier's current pricing. Correct as of July 2026.

Off-peak windows by tariff type

Economy 7 gives you a 7-hour off-peak window overnight, typically somewhere between 11pm and 8am depending on your region and meter — the exact hours are set by the local distribution network, not the supplier, so it varies by postcode.

Economy 10 adds a few extra off-peak hours, often split across a night-time block plus a short afternoon block, giving more flexibility for daytime appliance use at the lower rate.

EV tariffs, in the style of Intelligent Octopus Go, generally offer a shorter but cheaper window of around 5-6 hours overnight, timed to cover a typical EV charging session. See our /tariffs/ev-tariff-comparison for how these stack up.

Heat pump tariffs, in the style of Cosy Octopus, often layer in a second, shorter off-peak window in the afternoon or early evening on top of the overnight one, recognising that heat pumps need to run at various points in the day.

Dynamic tariffs, in the style of Agile Octopus, don't have a fixed off-peak window at all — the cheapest hours shift daily based on wholesale prices and can occasionally include daytime dips, not just overnight ones. Our /tariffs/octopus-tariffs-explained page covers the mechanics of these in more detail.

Typical off-peak rate ranges

Rather than quoting today's prices (which will be wrong by the time you read this), it's more useful to think in bands. Peak-rate electricity on a time-of-use tariff is commonly around 28p/kWh, though this varies by supplier and region. Off-peak rates on these same tariffs typically sit in a 7-15p/kWh band — roughly a quarter to a third of the peak rate.

That spread is the whole point of these tariffs: a wide enough gap between peak and off-peak that it's worth shifting usage — or storing cheap electricity for later — even after accounting for standing charges, which are usually a bit higher on time-of-use tariffs than on standard ones.

How much cheaper is it really?

Here's an illustrative example only, not a quote. Say you have a 10 kWh home battery and there's a 20p/kWh spread between your off-peak and peak rates. Charging the battery fully overnight and using that stored energy during peak hours the next day is roughly a 10 kWh x 20p saving, or about £2/day. Over a year, that's in the region of £730 — again, purely illustrative and dependent on your actual usage, tariff, and battery efficiency losses.

That figure assumes you're cycling the battery once a day, every day, and that you have enough daytime peak-rate usage to actually consume the stored energy. Households with high evening usage — cooking, heating, appliances, EV charging — tend to see the fuller version of this saving. Try our /calculator for a more tailored estimate based on your own numbers.

When off-peak won't save you money

Time-of-use tariffs aren't automatically a win. If your household is mostly out during the day and your usage is concentrated in the early evening — cooking dinner, TV, lighting — a lot of your consumption falls in the peak window regardless of what you do at night, and the higher peak rate on these tariffs can end up costing you more overall than a flat tariff.

Similarly, if you can't realistically shift much usage overnight — no EV, no willingness to run appliances on a timer, no battery — you may only be able to use a small fraction of the cheap off-peak hours, while still paying the elevated peak rate for everything else. In that scenario, a standard flat or simple fixed tariff can work out cheaper. It's worth running the comparison rather than assuming off-peak is always better; see /tariffs for a broader rundown of tariff types.

What happens without a battery

Without a battery, 'using off-peak electricity' really means manually timing appliances — running the dishwasher, washing machine or tumble dryer overnight via a delay timer. This works, but it only shifts the specific loads you can schedule, which is typically a small fraction of a household's total daily electricity use.

Most of your consumption — lighting, cooking, the fridge, TV, general daytime use, EV charging if you can't always plug in overnight — still happens whenever it happens, largely at peak rates. You end up paying the (often higher) peak rate on the majority of your usage while only capturing the off-peak discount on a couple of appliance cycles a day.

How a battery unlocks the full saving

A home battery changes the arithmetic because it can store several kWh of cheap off-peak electricity overnight and then discharge it throughout the following day, covering usage whenever it actually happens rather than only the loads you can schedule. This means the whole household benefits from off-peak rates on a much larger share of daily consumption, not just the dishwasher and washing machine.

This is also why a battery can make sense even for households without solar panels — the saving comes from the tariff spread, not from self-generated power. Our guide on /guides/battery-storage-without-solar goes into this in more depth, including how sizing and usage patterns affect the payback.