Homeowners could have saved up to €2,324 on their electricity bills and €1,266 on gas by switching to the best available discount rate each year over the four years to 2021.
That’s the finding of the annual Energy and Water Monitoring Report from the Commission for the Regulation of Utilities (CRU). It found that, last year, the gap between the best and worst electricity rates was €581 and a more modest €316 for gas.
One in seven electricity customers switched provider along with one in six gas customers in a year when energy prices started climbing as Russia started squeezing supplies to Europe. All told more than 480,000 people switched suppliers — a jump of 15 per cent on the previous year. A further 14 per cent of electricity customers and 18 per cent of gas households negotiated better rates with their existing suppliers, according to the CRU.
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At year-end, Electric Ireland supplied 50.4 per cent of customers in the domestic electricity market, ahead of Bord Gáis (15.8 per cent), SSE Airtricity (10.3 per cent) and Energia (9.7 per cent).
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Bord Gáis Energy had 41.7 per cent of all domestic gas customers with Electric Ireland in second place on 23 per cent, followed by SSE (10.2 per cent) and Energia (10 per cent).
At the end of the year, one in eight electricity customers was in arrears in their account, as were 18.3 per cent of gas customers. However, disconnections fell throughout the year. In part, this was due to Covid-19 when there was a ban on cutting customer supplies but the CRU said disconnection rates were lower even where such action was permitted.
More expensive
Prices started rising from March and continued to do so throughout the rest of the year. The CRU data said the price of standard electricity plans jumped by more than 20 per cent, with the best-discounted plans ending the year 14.8 per cent higher.
Standard gas plans were 23.3 per cent more expensive at year-end with an 18.8 per cent rise among the best-discounted plans. However, in both cases, this lagged far behind the increase in wholesale prices —380 per cent for gas and 260 per cent for electricity.
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Customers in Ireland paid, on average, 12.8 per cent more for their electricity in the second half of last year than consumers across the euro zone. However, Irish gas customers were just under 8 per cent better off on the price they were paying in the same period, on average.
The report also looks at water supplies, noting that unplanned supply interruptions were up 11 per cent last year. Planned outages for works were also up — by almost 70 per cent to 2,636 across the State.
The average customer was using 378 litres of water a day, or 138,000 litres over the year but the top 1 per cent of Irish Water’s 1.8 million users accounted for close to 13 per cent of all domestic water use.
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Although up to half agree that sustainability is important in attracting customers, only one in 10 is now actively committed to sustainability and environmental issues in their business, according to the survey conducted with the Small Firms Association — a third of the level before the Covid pandemic.
Most complaints
Billing and account issues are the main reason customers have to contact suppliers, according to the CRU data, with billing accounting for half of all contacts with energy suppliers and 35 per cent of calls to Irish Water. Energy suppliers attracted the most complaints over the year (16,628), ahead of gas (8,158) and Irish Water (3,369) but, at 1.2 per cent, the proportion of gas customers unhappy was the highest.
“The biggest driver for active customer behaviour in 2021 was the increase in prices that suppliers had announced,” said Karen Trant, the CRU’s director of customer policy and protection. “While prices have continued to rise, there is still good value in switching supplier and we would encourage all customers to extract every cent of value that is available in the market by switching or renegotiating with your supplier.”
She said prices were expected to remain high next year after a series of swingeing increases this year.
