Ofgem has ordered troubled supplier Symbio Energy to pay the £450,000 it owes to the Feed-in Tariff (FiT) scheme or face the potential loss of its supply licence.
The feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme, administered by the regulator, provides payments to the owners of small-scale renewable energy generators, such as rooftop solar panels. It’s funded by levies on all suppliers, owed quarterly.
The most decent deadline for payments was last Wednesday, 11 August. Any supplier missing that deadline is “in breach of the rules of its supply licence,” Ofgem said.
That includes Symbio Energy. The small, electricity-only supplier owes £450,000 into the scheme and has told Ofgem that it will pay on 3 September, over three weeks late.
Ofgem is refusing to accept this timeline, which it says will delay the distribution of feed-in tariff money to generators and suppliers. It’s therefore issuing Symbio with a provisional order demanding it pays the funds in full. Failing to do so could lead to facing an investigation over its non-compliance and potentially the loss of its supply licence.
This isn’t the first time Symbio Energy has failed to make on-time payments into government schemes supporting green energy. In January, Ofgem opened an investigation into the supplier after it missed four deadlines for payments into the Renewables Obligation (RO) and feed-in tariff (FiT) schemes in 2020. At the time, Ofgem proposed fining Symbio £100,00 to “send a strong message” about the importance of timely payments.
Following this latest payment failure, Ofgem is proposing a final order that would require Symbio to turn over information about its cash flow forecasts. This kind of request is “common and routine” Ofgem said but suggests the regulator has doubts about the supplier’s financial stability.
Some customers of Symbio may share those concerns. On review sites like Trustpilot, they’ve reported that Symbio is ignoring meter readings they provide and instead using inflated estimates, artificially increasing bills. It’s also been slow to refund customer’s credit balances. Some customers speculate that Symbio is exaggerating usage and clinging on to credit balances in order to patch holes in their finances.
Symbio has responded aggressively to these allegations and other criticism, replying to reviews on Trustpilot with accusations of “cyberbullying” and links to news articles about consumers forced to pay libel damages to companies over untrue reviews. Trustpilot has said this threatening behaviour is in breach of its guidelines and has slapped Symbio with a cease and desist letter over the behaviour. Symbio currently earns just 1.5 stars on Trustpilot, with 76% of reviews characterising it as “bad.”
Meanwhile, Symbio was ranked 32nd out of 34 energy suppliers for customer service in Citizen Advice’s latest league table.
