Ovo stumps up £1.2 million for its SSE division's failure to hit Ofgem smart meter targets

21 August 2020

Ovo Energy, the fast-growing gas and electricity supplier, today had to stump up £1.2 million in a punishment for its recently acquired SSE Energy Services business's failure to hit targets on installing smart meters.

SSE also failed to hit its targets in 2018 and had to pay £700,000 for that breach.

Ovo bought the SSE business in January for £500 million but was left having to shell out the sum after the 2019 targets were missed.

While technically a voluntary payment, if Ovo had not paid it, regulator Ofgem would have launched a punitive enforcement action.

Ovo was fined £8.9 million earlier this year for overcharging customers and sending out inaccurate statements, affecting 500,000 customers. It stressed that today's breach was not its fault, and that it had improved SSE's smart meter operations since taking the business over.

Under their licence terms, energy suppliers have agreed to "take all reasonable steps" to supply smart meters to all homes and small businesses by the middle of 2021.

Big energy companies set their own annual targets to show they were set to meet that goal and Ofgem monitors their progress.

Smart meters are hoped to save households money by allowing them more carefully to monitor and control how much energy they use, and at what times of day.

They end the old fashioned practice of having estimated bills based on their own periodic meter readings and are hoped to help the environment by reducing overall energy consumption.

Money from the fines and other payments by energy companies goes into a fund run by the Energy Saving Trust which allots money to charities delivering energy related projects to benefit people in England and Wales.

In June, the government let companies off 2020's smart meter targets due to Covid-19, giving companies until the end of June next year to hit them.

The target of 100% coverage was extended to 2025.

EDF Energy paid £700,000 last year as punishment for missing its gas smart meter target for 2018.

Ovo said in a statement: "Since Ovo's acquisition of SSE Energy Services, we have significantly improved our smart meter rollout programme to ensure that we can install smart meters in more homes across the UK."

It said Ovo itself had consistently met and exceeded its smart meter targets and that more than half of its customers are now on the new technology.

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Ovo stumps up £1.2 million for its SSE division's failure to hit Ofgem smart meter targets

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