More domestic electricity and gas customers in the north switched suppliers last year in a bid to get a better deal, a market tracker has revealed.
Yet despite price fluctuations, the annual retail energy market monitoring (AREMM) report from the Utility Regulator shows that electricity and gas prices were generally below those in Britain and Ireland, but above the EU median.
It show that during 2023 some 121,000 domestic electricity customers switched to a different supplier, a 4.8% increase from the 2022 figure of 115,600, with the majority (36,000) taking place in the October to December quarter.
By the end of 2023, there were over 919,000 electricity connections across the north, both domestic and industrial & commercial (I&C), an increase of 6,361 on 2022.
During 2023 Power NI, Budget Energy and Click Energy all increased their market share whereas SSE Airtricity and Electric Ireland’s slice of the market share declined.
There were eight active electricity suppliers in the north’s electricity market in 2023, and their total market share by connections is: Power NI 59%, SSE Airtricity 17.1%, Budget Energy 10.6%, Electric Ireland 7.6%, Click Energy 4.1%, Go Power 1.2%, 3T Power 0.05%, and Flogas ES 0.01%.
Within the gas I&C market, there was a 58% increase in switches last year (840 in 2023 in comparison to 530 in 2022), and there were an additional 9,956 gas connections, taking the overall total to 324,706.
Even so, the total gas consumed saw a slight decrease to 6,826 megawatt hours (MWh) in 2023.
The dominant player for market share connections in the gas market is SSE Airtricity (64.3%) followed by firmus energy (34.5%), Flogas (0.6%), Go Power (0.6%), Flogas ES (0.01%) and Electric Ireland (0.005%).
The report also points to significantly more complaints being received from customers last year - up from 27,000 to 31,000 for electricity and from 42,700 to 59,800 in gas.
The most common electricity supplier complaints related to bills, payments and accounts (25%), customer service (23%) and prepayment meter issues (16%) while in the gas retail market the grievances were around bills, payments and accounts (70%), prepayment meter issues (9%) and switching (8%).
Colin Broomfield, director of markets at the Utility Regulator, said: “This report provides key insights into the workings of the electricity and gas retail markets in Northern Ireland and allows us to monitor the retail markets to inform our work and flag any areas of concern, and also compare and analyse longer term trends of market behaviour.”
He added: “We welcome the increase in switching across electricity and gas seen in 2023, which shows there is healthy competition in the supply market and that customers feel empowered to seek out better value and customer service.
“We continue to develop our reports and this year, we have included downloadable data to provide greater access and transparency into these figures.”
