E.ON Next is taking on ENSTROGA, Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy’s combined 233,000 domestic customers after the suppliers shuttered.
The companies announced they were closing at the end of September, becoming the last casualties of a month that saw nine small suppliers cease trading.
It followed Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy both being hit with provisional orders from Ofgem for failing to make their feed-in tariff payments. For Symbio, this was in addition to the £450,000 provisional order issued by the regulator in August.
The company was also one of three issued with a final order at the end of October 2020, after they collectively failed to pay £15 million in renewable scheme payments.
Symbio had been removed from Elexon’s Balancing and Settlement Code earlier in September 2021.
On 3 October, ENSTROGA, Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy’s customers were automatically switched to E.ON Next.
The company was launched in March 2020 by Big Six provider E.ON, following the acquisition of Innogy and with it its npower customer base. These npower customers were the first to be migrated onto E.ON Next, which was developed thanks to a strategic partnership with Octopus’ tech arm Kraken Technologies.
Two million customers had been migrated to the customer service platform as of May 2021.
In August, E.ON Next was also appointed as supplier of last resort when Hub Energy collapsed, taking on its 15,000 customers.
Over the past month, Avro Energy, Green Supplier, People’s Energy, Utility Point, PfP Energy and MoneyPlus Energy have all also shuttered, with Octopus Energy, Shell Energy, EDF and British Gas taking on their customers.
High wholesale energy prices have made the market particularly challenging for small supplier recently, with wholesale gas prices rising 250% since the beginning of the year. This growth combined with a number of generation outages and low wind speeds in September to create record high power prices.
