When storms damage electricity networks, power cuts can have a drastic short term effect on our homes, stopping us from turning lights on, cooking or communicating via the internet.
Ofgem
Ofgem, the national regulatory authority for energy, work very hard to ensure that Britain’s reliable energy network is always performing as well as it can. One of the ways in which they do this is by setting ‘Quality of Service Guaranteed Standards’, levels of performance which energy suppliers must abide by. One of the factors of these standards is how suppliers respond to power cuts and the disruption to supply, in both regular and extreme weather conditions.
If these standards are not met, as may be the case for you, the answer to ‘Am I entitled to power cut compensation from my supplier?’ is a big yes! If you feel that your service has been under the quality that is assured by Ofgem, you have up to three months to claim compensation.
Compensation
The compensation you may receive will be proportionate to the amount of time that you were cut off from the grid. It is not possible to compensate bill payers for the financial loss that they may have suffered from a power cut, for example, if you work from home, your pay will not be subsidised for the hours you were unable to perform your job.
Normal weather
As we mentioned earlier on this page, the Quality of Service Guaranteed Standards look at both regular weather and extreme weather in their compensation guidelines. The eligibility of your claim will depend on two factors, the cause of the power cut, and how long you were cut off for.
Domestic customers can claim £75 for being cut off for over 12 hours, and non-domestic customers can claim £150. For each additional hour you are cut off, you can claim £35 more, up to a cap of £300. If you are cut off four or more times in one year, for more than three hours each time, you will be able to claim another £75.
Extreme weather
In extreme weather situations, the answer to ‘Am I entitled to power cut compensation from my supplier?’ is a lot more complex. Initially, it depends on the classification of the storm, which must be checked and verified by Ofgem. The category of storm then defines how long customer must be cut off for before they are eligible for a claim. Then, there is another value to the claim set by how many faults the energy supplier experiences within a 24-hour period.
The maximum claim is capped at £700, but to be eligible for this you’d be cut off for nearly a week, which is not desirable. Generally, the value of your claim rises by £70 every 12 hours, but the claim doesn’t start for differing spans of time, dependent on the category of storm as explained above.
Am I entitled to power cut compensation from my supplier?
Absolutely! If you’ve suffered a power cut that falls into either the regular or extreme weather categories, for an extended period of time, you will be able to claim some compensation. Good luck!