ENERGY SUPPLIERS

Npower is one of the most recognised brands of energy companies. Formerly National Power, it was until 2002 part of the Innogy group, which combined with Yorkshire Power and Northern Electric. The company has a UK generation capacity of 10,000 MW. Innogy was acquired by RWE, one Germanys top two electricity companies.

RWE can be described as and energy and industrial conglomerate, with over 500 related interests, including Thames Water.

Eon claims to be the world's largest Investor Owned utility company, employing 67,000 people in Europe, Russia and USA. They came to prominence in the UK through their purchase of Powergen, who was a leading electricity generator, supplying 15% of UK requirements from 10 Giga Watts of Capacity. Since purchasing Powergen, Eon also purchased TXU, one the last US energy companies who entered the UK market.

Although Eon has retained the Powergen brand for the domestic market and have rebranded the Industrial and Commercial business to the new livery. The new "Eon Direct" is able to provide commercial energy supply throughout its supply network.

EDF Energy is the new name for the recently combined businesses of London Electric, SWEB and Seeboard Energy. These combined businesses supply 5 million of the UK market and generate 20 tera watts of electricity in the UK.

The letters, EDF, stand for Electricte de France and as the name suggests, EDF is a major supplier in France. The interests of this European conglomerate include generation, trading, distribution and supply with 46 million customers over 27 countries.

Of the original deregulated regional electricity companies, SSE is still British. An integrated energy company and one of the largest suppliers in the UK, it has over 5 million electricity and natural gas customers. These customers are supplied through the original brands, Southern Electric, Scottish Hydro Electric and Swalec. The company generates around 10% of the UK electricity requirement and through its transmission network, connects to 3 million end customers.

British Energy Plc is now a Power merchant selling to its own industrial and commercial customers and wholesaling power of its own generator.

British Energy Generation Ltd manages the UK's eight nuclear power stations and a coal fired plant. This makes British Energy the single largest single supplier, controlling 20% of UK supply, totalling 9600 mega watts of capacity.

The turbulence in the wholesale market price of electricity particularly affected this supplier. But with control of such large proportion of UK supply, its future seems secure.

British Gas is the major supplier of gas in the UK and is a brand of Centrica, as is Scottish Gas and Nwy Prydian. This business represents the gas sales and marketing arm of the previously nationalised British Gas business. The other parts include BG Group plc, the natural gas exploration and production business, in addition to Transco, the owner and operator of the national gas pipelines.

Centrica currently has over 12 million gas customers, nearly 6 million electricity customers and 1 million dual fuel customers. Other recognised brands include The AA motor and home services group, One Tel, the low cost call provider and until recently the Goldfish credit card services.

Originally formed as AGAS in 1987 and was the first independent gas supplier in the UK. Elf became a shareholder in 1990 and took over the entire business in 1996 and in 1999 eventually changed its name to Elf Business Energy to reflect the growing integration with the wider Elf Group.

Following the merger of Elf with Total, this company is part of the Total Fina Elf Group, recently renamed, TOTAL S.A.

Elf is focused on supplying gas and electricity to industrial and commercial customers.