The locally-owned electricity supplier, which only launched into the north at the end of the summer claiming to offer the cheapest standard unit rate for domestic customers, has secured its first few hundred customers, a report from the Utility Regulator reveals.
Share Energy, owned by Colm McClean, Jonny Barr and Damian Wilson and which has pledged to return half of all future company profits to its customers, had 377 customers at the end of September, according to the regulator’s latest quarterly retail energy market monitoring report.
That total is made up of 196 domestic credit customers, 180 prepayment meter customers and one medium-sized industrial and commercial customer.
But that is mere 0.01% of the electricity market, which continues to be dominated by Power NI, which has 554,478 customers (60% of the Northern Ireland market).
It is followed by SSE Airtricity (159,556 customers, or a 17.3% share), Budget Energy (107,696 customers/11.7% share), Electric Ireland (48,793 customers/5.3% share) and Click Energy (39,975 customers/4.3% share).
The Utility Regulator monitor shows that in the first half of this year (January to June) electricity and gas prices in the north were generally on a par with Britain and Ireland, but well above the EU median.
In that six-month period the average cost of an electricity unit in Northern Ireland was 32p, compared to 31.9p in the Republic, 31.2p in Britain and just 23.3p in the EU.
But the regulator notes that since April there has been a downward adjustment of the NI’s regulated tariffs for domestic consumers, which has not been fully reflected in its latest report due to the mismatch in time horizons.
The monitor revealed a continued increase in switching in domestic electricity (some 22,700 customers changed their supplier), with non-domestic electricity switching staying the same for the third quarter.
Gas domestic saw a decrease in switching on the previous quarter (down from 490 to 261) but non-domestic switching increased (from 1.0% to 1.1%).
There were an additional 1,329 electricity and 2,450 gas connections during the quarter, but a slight decrease in consumption for both fuel types.
The gas market is broken down into three segments (Greater Belfast, Ten Towns and West), and across all connections the dominant players are SSE Airtricity with a 64.3% share of the market, followed by firmus on 34.4%.
The electricity and gas (in the Greater Belfast area) markets have been open to competition to domestic customers since 2007, but there were no competing suppliers in the domestic market until 2010.
The Ten Towns area opened to gas competition for large industrial customers in 2012, and to domestic and small commercial customers in 2015.
During the third quarter of 2024 there were nine suppliers in the north’s electricity market and six suppliers in the gas market, although not all of these suppliers are certified to operate in all sectors (or in all gas distribution areas).
