United Kingdom: two other companies are missing. Now we go to elimination
Two other UK energy companies are closing because they cannot cope with the high costs of wholesale energy. Whoop Energy and XCel Power have gone out of business, leaving their customers, mostly companies, on their way.
The consumers of both energy companies will be designated as a new supplier by the market regulator Ofgem, through its supplier of last resort process. This is not a very high number of customers, but almost all of them are companies. Now the client companies will have to find a new supplier with the help of the sector authority Ofgem.
Neil Lawrence, Ofgem's Director of Retail, said: “Ofgem's number one priority is to protect customers. We know this is a troubling time for many people and news of a supplier going out of business can be disturbing. "
Under the regulator's safety net, the supply of energy to customers will continue and the funds that domestic customers have deposited into their accounts will be protected, where they are in credit.
Domestic customers will also be protected from the maximum energy price in case of switching to a new supplier.
However, these steps will not be free. Since the beginning of February , electricity prices have risen by 54% on purpose to keep electricity suppliers from going bankrupt. Currently for families it is set at an average of 1277 pounds per year, around 1500 euros per year, but from April the average price per family will go down to 1971 pounds per year, around 2500 euros. A very hard blow for British families, but the only choice for the sector authority Ofgem, because the alternative is to blow up the electricity companies.
With XCel and Whoop exiting the market, 28 companies have collapsed since September while Bulb Energy has been effectively nationalized, backed by public money in the largest state bailout from RBS in 2008.
This directly affected over four million customers, with 2.3 million switched to bailed out suppliers with Ofgem's intervention.
Currently, Ofgem is reforming the market to ensure that suppliers are more resilient to future market shocks by subjecting them to financial shocks that ensure survival of at least three months of price increases.
It also announced temporary measures, such as requiring suppliers to offer the same offers to existing customers that it does to potential new customers, and fees for hiring consumers from other companies.
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The article United Kingdom: two other companies are missing. Now we go to elimination comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/regno-unito-saltano-altre-due-altre-societa-ormai-si-va-a-eliminiazione/ on Sun, 20 Feb 2022 07:00:49 +0000.