OVO Energy supplier profile

OVO Energy's tariffs, export rates, EV and heat pump offers, environmental record, regulatory history and the pending E.ON acquisition, for owners weighing it as a supplier.

Company status, customer and market figures, and tariff terms in this profile were checked on 22 July 2026. Historical figures retain the date stated with them.

OVO Energy is a UK domestic gas and electricity supplier founded in 2009 by Stephen Fitzpatrick and based in Bristol. It grew from around 680,000 customers in 2017 into the country’s second-largest supplier after buying SSE’s retail arm for £500 million, a deal that completed in January 2020 and took it to roughly 5 million customers at the time. As of June 2025 it held 12.2% of the electricity market and 10.4% of the gas market. OVO’s own homepage puts its energy customer base at 3.5 million, while OVO Group counts around 4 million across all its retail brands; the higher figure takes in legacy brands and non-energy accounts.

In May 2026 E.ON announced an agreement to acquire OVO. The Competition and Markets Authority opened pre-notification information gathering on 8 July 2026, with its initial invitation to comment closing on 23 July. It had not formally begun a phase 1 investigation by the review date. Until the transaction completes, OVO and E.ON remain separate businesses and OVO says accounts, balances, tariffs and customer support are unchanged.

Home energy tariffs and exit fees

OVO’s default tariff is Simpler Energy, a standard variable tariff with no fixed term and no exit fee, priced against the wholesale market and the Ofgem price cap and changing each quarter. On top of that sit four fixed options: a 1 Year Fixed, a 1 Year Fixed with Boiler Cover, a 1 Year Fixed with Greener Electricity and a 2 Year Fixed. The 1 Year fixes carry an exit fee of £50 per fuel; the 2 Year Fixed charges £95 per fuel. Leaving both gas and electricity early therefore costs up to £100 or £190 depending on the term.

The variable rates give a sense of the running cost. From 1 July 2026 they sat at roughly 26.11p per kWh for electricity and 7.33p per kWh for gas, with standing charges of about 57.19p per day for electricity and 29.04p per day for gas on typical Direct Debit. Those figures track the July 2026 price cap of £1,862 a year for a typical dual-fuel Direct Debit household, which rose 13.5% on the previous quarter. Rates vary by region and change every cap period, so treat these as a snapshot rather than a fixed quote.

The Greener Electricity upgrade adds 100% renewable electricity backed by power purchase agreements (PPAs) with UK generators for around £80 a year on top of a fixed tariff. OVO’s standard supply is not renewable, so the upgrade and the default tariff describe different products; the fuel mix section below sets out the difference.

Charge Anytime for EV owners

Charge Anytime is an add-on for OVO customers who have a compatible EV or charger and a smart meter. It works on the variable and fixed tariffs alike. The technology, built on OVO’s Kaluza platform, schedules charging for the greenest window within the times the driver sets rather than charging on plug-in.

There are two ways to pay. Pay as you go discounts smart-scheduled charging to 14p per kWh, which OVO frames as around 4p per mile, with a maximum credit of £100 a month per account. The monthly plans bundle a fixed allowance: Standard at £27.50 covers up to 700 miles a month, Premium at £37.50 up to 1,000, Standard Plus at £59.50 up to 1,400 and Premium Plus at £79.50 up to 2,000, using OVO’s assumed efficiency of four miles per kWh. The plans carry no long-term contract. Every plan includes EV Charger Cover and a public-charging voucher, £120 a year on the two lower tiers and £240 on the two higher ones. The three higher tiers include a battery health check and Kwik Fit discount.

OVO advertises a saving of around £460 a year on the Premium monthly plan. That figure assumes 12,000 home-charged miles plus 600 public miles, compared against its standard variable rate of 26.34p per kWh and an 80p per kWh public charge point operator (CPO) rate. Whether it holds for a given driver depends heavily on how many miles are driven and how much of the charging happens at home.

Charge Anytime users can also enter OVO’s Power Move prize draws through Power Move Flex, which combines the EV plan with the Power Move demand-shifting scheme. OVO is separately running a vehicle-to-grid trial, which would let a driver sell power stored in an EV battery back to the grid. It is not yet a live offer.

Export rates: three SEG (Smart Export Guarantee) tariffs

For owners of solar panels or a home battery, OVO runs three SEG tariffs at very different rates, separated by how much you commit to OVO.

Tariff	Rate	Who qualifies	System size cap
Standard SEG	4p/kWh	Any supplier, any installer	Up to 5MW
SEG Beyond Exclusive	12p/kWh	OVO home energy customer, any installer	Up to 30kW
SEG Install Exclusive	20p/kWh	OVO-installed panels or battery plus OVO energy	Up to 30kW

The 12p Beyond Exclusive rate was cut from 15p in February 2025. At the same time OVO dropped the earlier condition that the system be installed through OVO, so it now needs only that OVO supplies your home energy, and it no longer requires OVO Beyond membership despite the name. The 20p Install Exclusive rate is the one solar-comparison site Sunsave describes as one of the most generous export tariffs on the market, and reaching it means buying both the installation and the energy supply from OVO. Payments land quarterly in March, June, September and December, roughly eight weeks after the end of each meter-read month, and the meter has to be a smart meter sending export readings.

Solar, battery and heat pump installation

OVO sells solar and battery installation through OVO Solar Heating, working with one vetted local partner per region, and it points to a 10-year workmanship warranty it describes as the longest of any major energy company. The same arm installs air source heat pumps, fitting new radiators where the heat loss survey calls for them, over a stated 5 to 8 days, and it lists air conditioning, boiler replacement and insulation among its home services.

Heat pump installations can draw the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant of £7,500 for eligible households in England and Wales, for installations completed before March 2028. The grant comes from the scheme itself rather than from OVO, so eligibility and the deadline are set by the government, not the supplier.

Heat Pump Plus and the Havenwise trial

Heat Pump Plus, an add-on offering a flat 15p per kWh rate that heat pump owners rated highly, paused new sign-ups around November 2025 and closed on 1 February 2026. OVO contacted affected customers and reimbursed exit penalties for those who chose to leave. In parallel it ran a trial with Havenwise from October 2025 to March 2026, remotely optimising heat pumps for selected customers with Vaillant or Mitsubishi units so they draw power at greener, cheaper times. Heat pump owners who joined OVO for the flat rate no longer have it, and OVO offers no direct replacement heat pump tariff.

Power Move and Beyond: the reward schemes

OVO runs two free schemes that reward flexible use, both requiring a smart meter, Direct Debit payment and the OVO app, and both underpinned by the Kaluza platform.

Power Move pays for shifting demand away from the weekday evening peak of 5pm to 7pm. Keep peak-hour use below 15% of your total in a month and you enter that month’s prize draw; a lower percentage earns more entries. The draw, which began in February 2025, awards five prizes of a year’s free energy capped at £2,000, plus 500 prizes of £15, 1,000 of £5 and 45,501 of £2. Since it pays out through a prize draw, the value to any single household is a lottery outcome rather than a guaranteed discount.

Beyond is OVO’s loyalty programme, styled as an energy savings account. Its headline perk is two hours of free electricity a week, chosen in the app and capped at 1kWh an hour, though the offer ran only from 18 May to 2 August 2026 and excludes EV, battery and heat pump loads. Its longer-term rewards are redeemable as OVO credit rather than cash: up to five free solar panels worth up to £500 off an OVO solar and battery system, up to 2,400 free EV miles when joining Charge Anytime and up to a year of free heating credit worth up to £630.48 when buying a heat pump from OVO. Membership also brings ticket presales and VIP entry to venues through OVO Live.

OVO’s fuel mix and environmental record

OVO’s standard electricity is not green. Its published fuel mix for April 2024 to March 2025 was 73% natural gas, 15% coal, 4% nuclear, 6% other and just 2% renewables, at a carbon intensity of 474g per kWh. That renewable figure is far below rivals who advertise 100% green electricity, and the reason is a deliberate accounting choice: OVO stopped buying Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin (REGO) certificates as standard in 2023, arguing they let suppliers claim renewable credentials without adding any new renewable generation. Suppliers who still buy REGOs report a much higher headline renewable share on the same underlying grid.

Customers who want verified renewable supply take the Greener Electricity upgrade, which sources 100% renewable electricity through power purchase agreements with UK generators and adds a £40 a year contribution to independent renewable generators. OVO’s wider Plan Zero commits it to net zero by 2035 with a 90% emissions cut and a maximum 10% offsets, and it reports planting 5 million trees in the UK since 2015. The Good Shopping Guide’s 2026 ethical energy ratings placed OVO below benchmark, marking it down on energy mix and ethical accreditation.

Ofgem enforcement record

OVO has a long run of Ofgem enforcement, most of it tied to billing and metering. The main actions:

January 2020: £8.9m into Ofgem’s redress fund for inaccurate or incomplete information to customers and under or overcharging between 2015 and 2018, affecting more than 500,000 customers.
August 2020: £1.2m for missing smart meter installation targets.
March 2021: £2.8m for price protection failings affecting 240,563 customers, the highest penalty among 18 companies investigated.
May 2023: a £2m package for overcharging 10,987 customers under the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) between October 2022 and March 2023, with an average refund of £135.
November 2023: a £2.39m fine for further smart meter target failures.
January 2026: £2.8m in compensation for failing to pass on government support to 11,646 customers for 19 months.
June 2026: an agreed £7m into the redress fund over prepayment meter practices, plus £3.4m in credit and debt relief for vulnerable customers and £1.1m for customers in the Scottish Highlands.

Separately, Ofgem opened compliance proceedings in August 2023 over what it called serious concerns about OVO’s complaints backlog and waiting times, concerns raised by the Energy Ombudsman and Citizens Advice Scotland.

Customer service reputation

OVO’s reviews split sharply depending on who is asked. On Trustpilot it holds a score of about 4.5 to 4.6 out of 5 from more than 270,000 reviews. In the Which? energy survey of September and October 2025 it came last of 17 companies at 61%, with two-star ratings across customer service, communications and value for money. Citizens Advice ranked it second worst for customer service in 2022, behind only Utilita. The gap reflects the difference between Trustpilot, where reviewers opt in, and the Which? survey, which polls a representative sample; the survey is the better guide to a typical customer’s experience.

The Which? assessment was not uniformly negative. OVO scored well for contacting the supplier, joint second at 8 out of 12, and for help for customers who need it at 9 out of 10. Its most common complaint was a Direct Debit set too high or too low, cited by 9% of customers. From 1 October 2025 OVO launched a £56m Extra Support Package covering emergency top-ups, payment reductions, extended repayment plans and free energy-saving products.

Financial position and the E.ON acquisition

The acquisition sits against a run of financial strain. In September 2025 OVO Group warned of material uncertainty over its status as a going concern after failing to meet Ofgem’s capital buffer requirements, and it took a £60m loan from Cheyne Capital at a high compound interest rate. By February 2026 it was one of five suppliers in breach of Ofgem’s capital obligations and had refinanced with a sub-investment-grade loan paying 12% plus an uplift.

E.ON’s May 2026 agreement to buy OVO followed that period, and some analysts read the deal as a rescue rather than a strategic purchase. Completion is expected in the second half of 2026, subject to CMA approval, with no decision announced as of July 2026. For existing customers the practical effects are not yet clear: E.ON has not detailed its integration plans, and whether the OVO brand is kept or retired and how tariffs migrate remain unknown. Anyone signing a fixed OVO tariff now is doing so with the supplier’s future ownership unsettled.

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