ENSTROGA, Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy have become the latest small suppliers to cease trading.
Collectively, the three suppliers represent about 1% of Britain’s domestic customers. ENSTROGA had 6,000 domestic customers, Igloo Energy around 179,000 and Symbio Energy around 48,000 domestic customers and a small number of non-domestic customers.
Closure of the suppliers follow Igloo Energy and Symbio Energy being hit with provisional orders from Ofgem last week 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.
This was not the first time the supplier had fallen behind on payments to Ofgem, as it was one of three suppliers issued with a final order at the end of October 2020 following failure to pay £15 million in renewable scheme payments.
Earlier in September, Symbio Energy was also removed from Elexon’s Balancing and Settlement Code, a step which effectively stops suppliers from taking on new customers.
Over the last month Elexon has also expelled Avro Energy, Utility Point, People’s Energy, PfP Energy and MoneyPlus Energy from the BSC. All of these suppliers have since shuttered and their customers have been taken on by Suppliers of Last Resort.
They follow on from a turbulent period for suppliers in Britain, with Hub Energy, Green Network Energy and Simplicity Energy all closing in 2021 and Yorkshire Energy, Tonik Energy, Effortless Energy and GnERGY doing so in 2020.
The challenging conditions of the British market have been exacerbated over the past month by high wholesale power prices. This has been driven by global gas shortages, along with a number of outages and low winds.
As winter approaches, National Grid ESO has warned that further supply constraints are likely to put pressure on the energy system. This could also drive up prices at points, challenging unhedged suppliers.
Recent research from Baringa for The Times has suggested that 39 suppliers could fail in the next 12 months, which would leave just 10 in the market.
