A consumer who switched from the most expensive providers of domestic gas and electricity to the cheapest at the beginning of 2015 could have saved themselves €361 over the course of 12 months according to a new report from the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER).
The regulator’s annual retail market report also shows Irish consumers had the highest switching rates in the EU for gas supplies and the second highest when it came to electricity last year.
And the report recorded a fall in the standard tariffs fall of up to 4.6 per cent in electricity and 5 per cent in gas over the course of last year with leading suppliers losing market share in domestic electricity and gas market to new entrants.
The largest reduction in the standard electricity tariff was offered by PrePayPower, while in the gas market, the largest reductions were offered by BGE and Flogas.
In 2015, the difference between the highest-priced standard plan and lowest-priced discounted plan was €235 for domestic electricity and €126 for domestic gas, based on typical average consumption levels.
According to the CER, customer switching was the key indicator of retail competition and supplier activity within the retail market.
Switches
While there was a slight decrease in the overall number of switches in the electricity and gas markets between 2014 and 2015, Irish consumers continue to rank amongst the most active movers in the EU, with 303,187 customers switching electricity supplier and 106,682 switching gas suppliers in 2015.
In addition, an increasing number of customers are negotiating better terms and prices with their existing suppliers and this is a trend which the CER will track and report on in 2016.
Electric Ireland remained the largest supplier in the domestic electricity market in terms of customer numbers and consumption, but saw this share reduce by 1.61 percentage points, to 54.71 per cent. Energia gained the most during that period in terms of consumption for domestic electricity with a 1.22 percentage-point increase to an overall market share of 4.42 per cent.
In the domestic gas market, Energia showed the greatest gain, increasing its market share by 1.89 percentage points between 2014 and 2015. Flogas also increased its customer base by 0.94 percentage points to 5.78 per cent.
Loss
The greatest loss in market share was by SSE Airtricity, which reduced by 2.4 percentage points to 14.2 per cent. Bord Gáis Energy, the supplier with the largest market share, saw a decrease of 0.77 percentage points to 51.26 per cent.
Disconnections of customers for non-payment declined significantly in 2015 compared to 2014 with a year on year reduction from the peak years of 2011 and 2012. Disconnections reduced by 11 per cent in electricity and 12 per cent in gas. The total number of disconnections in 2015 was 7,783 for electricity and 3,542 for gas, with many of these relating to vacant premises.
