Tariffs and grants / Supplier landscape / ScottishPower supplier profile

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ScottishPower supplier profile

Iberdrola-owned Big Six supplier with EV, heat pump, solar and export tariffs and its own installation arm.

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.

ScottishPower is a UK energy supplier owned by the Spanish utility Iberdrola, supplying gas and electricity to around five million homes and businesses. It sells its domestic electricity as 100% renewable, backed by its own UK windfarms. For a household running solar panels, an EV or a heat pump, ScottishPower runs a separate tariff or add-on for each of those loads, three SEG (Smart Export Guarantee) tariffs for exported power and its own solar, battery and heat pump installation arm.

Owned by Iberdrola, and one of the Big Six

ScottishPower was formed in 1990 and privatised in 1991, spun out of the South of Scotland Electricity Board. It expanded through the decade, buying the Merseyside and north Wales distribution company MANWEB in 1995, and was itself bought by the Spanish utility Iberdrola in 2007 in a deal worth £11.6bn that completed on 23 April that year. It is headquartered in Glasgow and operates as Iberdrola’s UK subsidiary.

ScottishPower is one of the “Big Six” suppliers that long dominated the UK market. Ofgem (Office of Gas and Electricity Markets) data for June 2025 gave it about 8% of the electricity market and 7% of gas. Its own 2024 accounts report over four million domestic and business customers, while comparison sites put the figure closer to five million; the gap is likely a matter of how business accounts are counted. Ofgem figures show its share of the retail market has been falling for several years. It has also taken on customers from failed suppliers as a supplier of last resort, including Extra Energy in 2018, Tonik Energy in 2020 and Yorkshire Energy the same year.

SP Energy Networks is a different business from the supplier

SP Energy Networks is the DNO for central and southern Scotland, Merseyside, north Wales and parts of Cheshire and Shropshire, and it owns the transmission network across the south of Scotland. ScottishPower’s retail arm, ScottishPower Energy Retail Ltd, is the separate company that sells gas and electricity to homes and businesses. Both sit under the same parent, but they do different jobs: the DNO runs the poles, cables and substations that carry electricity to every property in its area regardless of supplier, while the retail arm is one of many companies a household can choose to buy energy from. Living in an SP Energy Networks area does not mean the property has to be supplied by ScottishPower, and ScottishPower supplies customers well beyond those network regions, across the UK.

Green electricity claims and the windfarms behind them

ScottishPower supplies its domestic electricity as 100% renewable, and it says it was the first integrated energy company in the UK to generate all its electricity from green sources, which it reached in 2019 after selling its last gas power station. The renewable supply is backed by its own UK windfarms; the company operates 38 onshore windfarms, starting with Carland Cross in Cornwall in 1992 and including Whitelee near Glasgow, the largest onshore windfarm in the UK at 215 turbines and enough output for around 300,000 homes.

A green electricity tariff means the supplier matches a customer’s usage with renewable generation certificates, known as REGOs (Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin). That is separate from the fuel mix of the wider corporate group’s generation portfolio. ScottishPower presents its position as a company that generates the renewable electricity it sells rather than relying only on purchased certificates.

Standard, tracker and fixed import tariffs

ScottishPower sells import electricity and gas across the usual UK tariff types. Its default is the Standard Variable Tariff, capped by the Ofgem price cap; on London-region direct-debit rates for June 2026 that came to 24.90p per kWh for electricity and 5.914p for gas, with standing charges of 44.82p and 29.60p a day. Those rates move whenever Ofgem resets the cap, which for July to September 2026 lifted the electricity import rate to around 26.11p per kWh. Rates also vary by region.

A Cap Tracker tariff follows the price cap but works out about £7.50 a year per fuel cheaper than the standard rate, with no exit fees. Fixed tariffs lock the rate for a term and carry a £50 exit fee per fuel for leaving early. Business tariffs are available for smaller firms.

ScottishPower supplies households across Great Britain and is not tied to its own network regions. Tariff terms differ by product and issue. Current EV Saver terms, for example, refer to a contract-specific exit fee but allow a move to another ScottishPower tariff without charging it. Exit terms should therefore be read from the tariff confirmation, not generalised across every specialist product.

EV Saver: cheap overnight charging

EV Saver is the ScottishPower EV tariff, charging 8.5p per kWh off-peak overnight. For most meters the five-hour band runs midnight to 5am in winter and 1am to 6am during British Summer Time. ScottishPower says SMETS1 meters made by L&G, Itron or Aclara retain the midnight-to-5am band. The tariff needs a ScottishPower electricity supply, a single-rate smart meter sending half-hourly readings, monthly Direct Debit and an EV with a home charger. ScottishPower matches the electricity with Renewable Energy Guarantees of Origin from its own renewable generation.

ScottishPower suggests another tariff may suit a household using less than 35% of its electricity in the off-peak band. Older third-party pages showing 7.2p or the 7.45p launch rate are stale against ScottishPower’s current 8.5p product page.

EV Optimise: a smart-charging add-on

EV Optimise is an add-on rather than a tariff of its own, bolted onto an existing ScottishPower tariff though not EV Saver, Solar Saver or Heat Pump Saver. It charges 8p per kWh for EV charging at any time of day, not only overnight, with charging scheduled through an app rather than tied to a fixed window. The hours from 4pm to 8pm are excluded. A promotional rate of 6p per kWh applies to customers who buy a ScottishPower EV charger. It needs a compatible EV, a smart charger, a smart meter and a ScottishPower electricity supply.

ScottishPower launched EV Optimise in September 2024 and markets it as around 700 miles of charging for under £15 a month, or as little as 2p a mile, with a saving of up to £310 a year. By launch it reported more than 4,000 home chargers installed and over 10,000 EV drivers on its books.

Heat Pump Saver

Heat Pump Saver gives 14p per kWh for five hours every day, from 11am to 4pm, with the remaining hours at around 29.51p per kWh. The cheap rate covers everything the home uses in that window, including appliances beyond the heat pump. ScottishPower launched the tariff in 2024 at 15p per kWh and has since cut it to 14p. It needs any heat pump, a communicating smart meter and payment by direct debit, and a dual-fuel version is available. There are no exit fees and switching to another ScottishPower tariff is free. ScottishPower suggests it suits homes that can take at least 30% of their electricity in the off-peak window.

By September 2024 ScottishPower reported 3,000 heat pump installations over the previous 18 months. It also installs air source heat pumps itself, with a two-year installer warranty, a seven-year manufacturer warranty and two annual services included.

Solar Saver

Solar Saver gives 20p per kWh for 14 hours a day, from 7pm to 9am, for households with solar panels. Any panels qualify. It needs a ScottishPower electricity supply, solar PV, a SMETS2 smart meter and payment by direct debit, and there are no exit fees. The electricity is supplied as 100% renewable.

Power Saver demand-shifting slots

Power Saver rewards customers for moving electricity use out of busy periods. The current version, Power Saver 2, lets a household pick eight one-hour slots a week for discounted electricity, a 50% or 20% saving depending on the slot, chosen through the app or online. Peak hours, Monday to Friday from 4pm to 8pm, cannot be selected. The default setting puts the slots on Saturday and Sunday between noon and 4pm. Slots are chosen by the 25th of the month and lock in from the 1st of the next. A separate scheme, Power Saver Plus, sends near real-time notifications of demand-side response events and pays energy credit for taking part. Both need a ScottishPower electricity supply and a communicating smart meter, and neither is open to customers on EV Optimise, Solar Saver or Heat Pump Saver.

SmartGen: what ScottishPower pays for exported power

ScottishPower runs three SEG tariffs paying small-scale generators for the electricity they export to the grid, each at a different rate. SmartGen pays 6p per kWh and is open to any eligible household, with no requirement to buy import electricity from ScottishPower; it was cut from 12p to 6p in July 2025. SmartGen Premium pays 12p per kWh and is open only to households that also take their import electricity from ScottishPower, and it was created in July 2025. SmartGen Premium Plus pays 15p per kWh, restricted to import customers who bought their solar or battery system through ScottishPower. ScottishPower markets the 15p rate as one of the best on the market; one solar advice site notes that among export rates tied to buying the system from the same supplier, 15p is currently the lowest.

All three rates are variable and are paid to the customer’s bank account every 90 days. To join, a generator needs an MCS certificate, a connection letter from the local DNO and a smart meter recording half-hourly export. Eligible technologies are solar PV, wind, hydro, anaerobic digestion and micro combined heat and power (micro-CHP). A household on the older Feed-in Tariff has to opt out of it before joining. Applications take up to six weeks to process, with the DNO meter reference taking a further one to two weeks, and there is a 14-day cooling-off period. Households switching from another SEG supplier are paid from the date agreed with the old supplier.

On Ofgem’s registration figures for 2024-25, ScottishPower was the fourth most popular SEG provider, with more than 14,000 registrations, about 5.3% of the market, and the SmartGen tariff was the fifth most popular single tariff at 5.1% of sign-ups. One estimate puts the export earnings from a 4.5kW system on the 12p Premium rate at around £240 a year.

Installing solar and batteries through SmartPower

ScottishPower fits solar panels and batteries under its SmartPower brand, using MCS and TrustMark-certified installers with workmanship protected by the electrical body NICEIC. Panels start from £4,295 installed, with a 25% promotional discount running until 16 July 2026, and a battery costs from £2,910 on its own or from £1,680 bought with panels. A combined solar-and-battery purchase carries 0% VAT. The warranties are 25 years on the panels, two years on the workmanship and ten years on the battery. ScottishPower markets the systems as cutting bills by up to 94% and saving up to £995 a year. Independent pricing puts a 4kW system with a battery at roughly £11,000 to £13,500, about 15% to 20% more than an independent MCS installer would charge, with lead times of six to ten weeks.

Customer-service record and complaints history

ScottishPower has a poor record for customer service. The Which? survey published in January 2026 ranked it the worst supplier for customer service, with the lowest satisfaction score of any supplier, and rated it worst for complaints handling and worst on overall customer score. Which? gave it an overall score of 56%, a customer score of 62% and an assessment score of 50%, drawn from a survey of 11,945 energy customers carried out in September and October 2025, of whom 780 were ScottishPower customers; on the overall assessment it tied with EDF for second lowest. ScottishPower disputed the survey’s methodology and pointed to a Citizens Advice scorecard that it said showed sustained, high-quality delivery.

ScottishPower was temporarily banned from taking on new customers in early 2015 over poor service and overdue bills, with complaint levels that year reported at 20 times those of the best-performing competitor. It agreed an £18m settlement with Ofgem in April 2016 following an investigation into its customer-service standards. In 2017 it pursued a couple for a debt they did not owe and sent bailiffs despite their letters. The Observer named it worst for customer service in 2020, and Which? ranked it worst in January 2021 as well as January 2026. Ofgem opened an investigation in November 2020 into whether it was meeting its smart-meter rollout obligations, and no findings were made. On Trustpilot it holds about 4.3 out of 5 from more than 150,000 reviews, a higher score than its Which? ranking would suggest.

Warm Home Discount and support for vulnerable customers

As one of the large mandatory suppliers, ScottishPower takes part in the Warm Home Discount, the government scheme that applies a £150 one-off discount to an eligible household’s electricity bill. Eligibility runs through Pension Credit Guarantee Credit or a low income; in England and Wales qualifying customers are picked up automatically, while in Scotland a household on the low-income route has to apply to its supplier directly. Prepayment customers qualify, sometimes as a top-up voucher. The scheme was closed for winter 2025-26 and reopens in October 2026. Large suppliers also have to run a Priority Services Register, a free support scheme for customers in vulnerable circumstances, which ScottishPower is required to offer.

Cancer Research UK fundraising and community projects

ScottishPower has raised more than £20m for Cancer Research UK since 2012 and offers a Help Beat Cancer tariff. Its community work includes a Zero Carbon Communities programme launched in 2019 and an e-bike scheme in Glasgow in 2020.

Applies to

Solar, Battery, EV charging, Heat

Last reviewed

22 Jul 2026