Citizens Advice responds to Ofgem’s consultations on changes to how energy balancing costs are charged

We remain supportive of Ofgem’s core aim of moving Balancing Service Use of System (BSUoS) charges wholly to demand customers and fixing these on a volumetric basis ahead of time as recommended by the Second BSUoS Task Force. On balance this should deliver net benefits to energy consumers.

However, Ofgem’s preferred solution to deliver this (CMP361, WACM 5) involves the creation of a new fund which is paid for by energy consumers to manage the risk that tariffs do not recover the full costs of BSUoS.

We are not convinced that there is evidence that it is clearly in consumers interest for such a fund to be implemented and recommend that the benefits case is further assessed against a range of potential scenarios to ensure that the outcome of this change is not worse for energy consumers than the status quo.

Our response to Ofgem’s initial consultation - October 2022 [ 200 kb]

Our response to Ofgem’s updated consultation - November 2022 [ 200 kb]