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A new supplier, Share Energy, has entered Northern Ireland’s electricity market.

The company is owned by local business people with long experience in the renewable electricity industry.

The Northern Ireland household market was opened to competition in 2007 and currently has seven suppliers, including Share Energy.

In May Electric Ireland said it would be pulling out of the market following a review of its business.

Power NI remains by far the largest supplier with about 60% of household connections.

The next largest suppliers are SSE with about 16% of connections and Budget Energy with about 12%.

Share Energy is also available to business customers, a market which currently has eight suppliers.

Share Energy is so-named because it intends to operate a profit sharing arrangement with its customers when it becomes profitable.

It will determine a shareable profit based on its audited accounts which will be shared equally between the company and its customers.

The amount paid to each customer will depend on how much electricity they have used during that financial year.

Keypad customers will get their payment as a code to add credit to their meter while non-keypad customers will have a credit applied to their account.

Customers are not shareholders so the payment is not treated as a dividend.

Chief Executive Damian Wilson said: ‘We believe our profit-sharing model will transform the market here, whilst also underlining our commitment to fairness, transparency, and value.’

Mr Wilson is a former chief executive of Click Energy and a former director of Budget Energy.

Budget has been the most successful of the local electricity supply start ups and was sold to the Dublin-based DCC group in 2020.

Other local suppliers have come and gone.

Bright Energy was in the market for about a year before closing in 2021 while Open Electric went into administration in 2016.