Here is a round-up of the weekly news from UK energy suppliers:

Npower told to supply free energy to complainants!

Strange but true. The regulators at Ofgem have told Npower to supply free energy to people who have not had their ombudsman complaint ruling, implemented within 28 days. Not only that, they will have their existing debt written of also. A very good piece on this can be found on the Ofgem website here. If you need to contact Npower, their details can be found on this page.

SSE loses 90,000 customers in three months

SSE also trades as Southern Electric, Swalec, Atlantic and Scottish Hydro stated that the number of electricity and gas accounts in the UK & Ireland fell from 8.58 million at the end of March to 8.49 million at the end of June.

SSE blamed tough competition in the market for the downturn. They launched a competitive fixed rate scheme earlier this month to hopefully claw back some of the lost revenue. For further information on contacting SSE, please visit our dedicated SSE page.

The above has not had any impact on their decision to invest in North Sea gas fields, to the tune of £565million, a move which will boost its capacity to meet UK electricity demand. SSE also acquired a 50% stake in the Sean gas field from BP in 2012, as well as stakes in gas assets bought from Hess and Perenco in 2010. Their chief executive Alistair Phillips Davies stated that “the firm had regularly set out our wish to seek new opportunities to increase SSE’s presence in the upstream gas sector where assets can be acquired for a fair price, and that is exactly what this deal represents”

Ouch! EDF fined 1.4bn Euro by the EU Commission

Who would have thought it? EDF, your favourite, French owned energy supplier has been hit by a colossal fine due to the French government granting them what are now deemed to be illegal tax breaks. The FT has a very good piece on this story if you care to follow this link.

EDF which is a French state controlled utility is buying a majority stake in the reactor business of nuclear group Areva, and is looking for partners to take a minor stake, according to Reuters. Anyone interested should contact the chief executive, John-Bernard Levy.

E.ON and Sungevity launch solar push with promise of guaranteed returns for homes.

Good news for the Midlands and the North of England. E.ON and Sungevity have decided to expand a joint solar rooftop scheme into the UK market. Already rolled out into the Netherlands and Germany, it is expected that it will be expanded across the rest of the UK in the coming months.

The ideology behind the scheme is to encourage more decentralised energy on the grid. Also and more importantly, the alliance is working towards enabling a more sustainable global future for generations to come…E.ON and Sungevity stated that “if the “solar panels fails to produce at least 95 per cent of the electricity quoted, they will receive a payment to help cover the shortfall over the 20-year lifetime of the scheme”.

The launch of this new programmes comes as the government are seen reducing support for this technology….Britain however, according to a recent report by Solar Power Europe, led the European solar market in 2014, adding 2.4GW of new capacity to the domestic market. And a third to Europe’s overall 7GW of growth. Power to E.ON and Sungevity, (pardon the pun), for focussing on clean power generation energy services.

That’s the round-up of this week’s energy news folks, so thanks for taking the time to have a gander and hope to see you soon.