The Utility Regulator has published its draft determination for Power NI’s next supply price control for 2025-2029. The draft determination outlines our minded-to decisions on the scope, duration, operating costs allowance and profit margin for the Power NI supply price control, which is due to commence in April 2025.
Power NI was the first domestic electricity supplier in Northern Ireland and remains the dominant supplier in the market. We therefore regulate the charges that they pass on to their customers, which we do through the price control process and the tariff setting process.
A price control sets out funding decisions on a range of areas, including how much the company can charge consumers to run its business, how the company is going to operate and their level of profit margin. In determining the price control, we scrutinise and challenge Power NI’s Business Plan and review their cost forecasts. We then set out the charges that Power NI can recover, ensuring their customers receive a quality service at a reasonable cost.
The overall purpose of the price control is to set an efficient level of revenue for Power NI, which the company then collects through its regulated electricity tariffs.
Over the four-year period, we have proposed that Power NI receives an allowance of £152 million in operating costs. We are also proposing a margin which is equivalent to 2.2% of revenue. The allowances provided for within this next price control for Power NI make up around 8% of a typical domestic customer’s bill (as of the 1 December 2024 tariff rate).
The publication of the draft determination follows on from our ‘Approach’ consultation, published in November 2023, and the Final Approach document in March 2024.
Our draft decisions are being published for consultation and we would encourage you to make your views known to us. It is important that we are provided with a range of responses that will help us deliver the most robust and informed decisions as we finalise this next price control for Power NI.
The consultation is open until 5:00pm on Monday 3 March 2025. Further details on the draft determination and how to respond are available on our website.
For next steps, we plan to publish our Final Determination on the price control and a consultation on the licence modifications in April 2025. The consultation period will last for four weeks and details of how to respond will be provided at the time of publication.
Copies of all documents will be made available in large print, Braille, audio cassette and a variety of relevant minority languages if required.