Bulb Energy: The Collapse and What Happened to Customers

Bulb Energy is gone. The supplier ceased trading and was placed into a Special Administration Regime, run by an administrator appointed by the government rather than going through the usual Supplier of Last Resort route, because with 1.6 million customers it was too big for that process¹. It continued to trade under administration during the energy crisis, and its household accounts were later transferred to a new supplier.

For anyone who was with Bulb, the practical answers are these. Your gas and electricity supply was never cut off. Your credit balance was protected. Any debt on your account moved with you. Your fixed tariff did not survive the transfer, and the account continued on the new supplier's terms.

The wider context matters too. Between July 2021 and July 2022, 29 energy suppliers failed, and the lack of financial resilience across the market combined with rising wholesale costs to bring them down¹. Bulb was the largest of them, and the way it was handled was different from the rest.

Bulb Energy has ceased trading: what that means for customers

A failed supplier does not mean a failed supply. Ofgem's position is unambiguous: if your energy supplier goes out of business because of financial problems, you will still have electricity and gas supplied to your home or business, and your energy supply will not be cut off². The same guidance tells households they do not need to do anything, because the regulator moves them automatically to a new supplier and makes sure supply is not interrupted³.

What changes is who you pay and on what terms. The old company stops being your counterparty, the account transfers, and the new supplier becomes responsible for billing, refunds and any debt that comes with the account. Bulb's failure was unusual in scale rather than in kind: it was one of 29 suppliers that exited the market in the year to July 2022, a period when the lack of financial resilience within many suppliers met a rise in wholesale prices¹.

The Energy Price Guarantee, which capped unit rates during the crisis, is now closed⁴. That matters for anyone reading old Bulb paperwork: the support arrangements described at the time no longer exist, and current bills are governed by the price cap instead.

Why Bulb went into special administration, not the usual Supplier of Last Resort process

The normal route for a failed supplier is the Supplier of Last Resort process. Ofgem chooses a new supplier through a bidding process, where energy companies bid to take on the customers, and they are only chosen if they can supply energy to the new customers without affecting their existing ones². It is designed for suppliers small enough that another company can absorb the book without strain.

Bulb was too large for that. The Department took Bulb Energy into a Special Administration Regime precisely because, with 1.6 million customers, it was too big to go through the Supplier of Last Resort process¹. Instead, an administrator was chosen to run the company of the energy supplier that had gone out of business², and Bulb continued to trade under that arrangement.

The administrator runs the company until it is rescued, for example through restructuring, or sold, or until its customers are moved to other suppliers². Bulb became insolvent during Scheme Year 2 of the Smart Export Guarantee and, due to its size, was placed into a Special Administration Regime, meaning it continued to trade⁵. That continuation is the key difference: customers stayed with Bulb, under administration, rather than being moved immediately.

The Supplier of Last Resort process also has boundaries worth knowing. It does not apply to Heat Networks or Green Deal⁶. Households on a heat network, or with Green Deal finance attached to their property, sit outside the automatic transfer arrangements that cover ordinary gas and electricity accounts.

What happened to the 1.6 million households on Bulb's books

Bulb's 1.6 million customers were the reason for the special treatment, and they were also the reason the administration lasted as long as it did. Running a supplier of that size through an administrator kept the accounts trading while a buyer was found, rather than splitting the book across several suppliers through competitive bidding.

The scale is easier to see against the wider failure wave. During the period between July 2021 and May 2022, 29 energy suppliers failed, affecting nearly four million households in the UK¹. Bulb's 1.6 million customers were a substantial share of that total, which is why the government's approach to Bulb differed from its approach to the smaller failures around it.

For the households involved, the practical experience was continuity rather than disruption. Supply continued, billing continued, and the account eventually transferred as a whole. That is a different outcome from a Supplier of Last Resort transfer, where the customer book is broken up and households may find themselves with a supplier they did not choose, on terms set by that supplier.

The transfer of a large customer book also carries a cost that does not disappear. Ofgem's explanatory note on customer credit balances records that credit balances are protected when a supplier fails, but that these costs can be recovered from all consumers⁷. The protection is real for the individual household, and it is paid for across the market.

Your supply, credit balance and tariff when a supplier fails

Three things matter to a household when a supplier fails: whether the lights stay on, whether the money in credit comes back, and what happens to the tariff.

On supply, the answer is settled. Ofgem states that if your supplier goes out of business because of financial problems, you will still have electricity and gas supplied to your home or business, and your energy supply will not be cut off². Households do not need to act, because the regulator moves them automatically to a new supplier and ensures supply is not interrupted³.

On credit, the position is also settled. If your supplier goes out of business, your credit balance is still protected by the rules Ofgem sets, and the new supplier will contact you about a refund². The cost of that protection is recovered from consumers generally, as Ofgem's explanatory note sets out⁷. In ordinary switching, the same principle applies in a simpler form: when you switch to a new supplier, your old supplier will refund any credit in your final bill, and you could get compensation if they do not⁸.

On tariff, the fixed terms end. A fixed rate contract is with a named supplier, and when that supplier fails the contract does not carry over. The account moves to the new supplier on its deemed terms, which in practice means a standard variable tariff governed by the price cap.

Fixed tariffs, exit fees and what your new deal might look like

A fixed tariff is a contract with a particular company, so it cannot survive that company's failure. The account transfers to the new supplier on a deemed contract, and the fixed rate, the fixed term and the exit terms all fall away with the old supplier.

There is a second reason fixed deals look different now. The Energy Price Guarantee, which ran during the crisis, no longer provides support for customers on fixed tariffs, because the price cap is below the EPG level⁹. The scheme itself is closed⁴. That means a fixed tariff taken out today stands or falls on its own numbers against the cap, with no crisis-era subsidy behind it.

Exit fees are the part households most often misread. Ofgem's guidance is that you may have to pay your previous supplier an exit fee if you were on a fixed rate tariff and chose to leave before it ended³. The fee attaches to leaving a fixed contract early, not to the failure itself. Consumer research published in July 2025 found that only 57% net of consumers could identify that exit fees may still apply to a fixed contract even when moving to another deal with the same supplier¹⁰, so the confusion is widespread.

Independent consumer guidance from Which?, published through the Welsh Government's energy advice pages, suggests choosing a tariff with low or no exit fees in case circumstances change and you want to cancel your contract early¹¹. That is a general point about contract design rather than a recommendation of any particular deal.

Debts, prepayment meters and the Warm Home Discount after a transfer

Debt is where a supplier failure touches a household most directly. Ofgem's guidance is that if the new supplier transfers customer debts from your old supplier, you will need to pay them for your debt instead². In Bulb's case the household accounts moved as a book, so debts moved with them. The debt does not vanish because the original company failed.

Where a household is struggling, suppliers are expected to review current payments and debt repayments¹², and there are schemes and grants aimed at paying off energy debt¹³. The Energy Ombudsman has published casework on exactly this situation: a consumer on an agreed 12-month debt payment plan whose changing financial circumstances were not reviewed by the supplier, where the outcome required the supplier to reconsider what the consumer was being asked to pay, offer alternative cheaper tariffs and energy efficiency advice, apologise and make a time and trouble award¹⁴.

Prepayment customers face their own rules. Once your credit runs out you will not be able to use any energy until you top up again¹⁵. Suppliers can switch off energy supply remotely through a smart meter, but they cannot disconnect customers without first taking all reasonable steps to help them repay debts, and cannot cut off supply for certain vulnerable consumers¹⁶. Where a supplier installs a prepayment meter without permission, it must give you £30 credit once it has installed the meter or remotely switched your existing meter to prepayment mode¹⁷.

On the Warm Home Discount, the recovery of scheme costs is shifting from the standing charge to the unit rate from April 2026¹⁸.

What the administration cost, and who paid

The direct cost of running a large supplier through administration falls on the public purse and, indirectly, on the market. The credit balances of Bulb's customers were protected, and Ofgem's explanatory note records that while credit balances are protected when a supplier fails, these costs can be recovered from all consumers⁷. That is the mechanism: individual households are made whole, and the bill is spread across the customer base.

The wider failure wave carried its own costs. Between July 2021 and July 2022, 29 energy suppliers failed, and the lack of financial resilience within many suppliers combined with rising wholesale prices to cause it¹. Wholesale costs, the price a supplier pays to buy energy, are the largest single input into a bill⁸, and the speed of the rise in 2021 and 2022 is what broke suppliers that had not hedged or capitalised for it.

Government support during the same period ran in the opposite direction. The Energy Price Guarantee, set by the UK government, limited the price that suppliers can charge for each unit of energy and subsidised all energy consumption above the price cap, at a total cost of £23 billion⁴. Government actions were described in Parliament as taking £150 out of energy costs¹⁹. The Feed-in Tariffs scheme recorded its own market exits: as a consequence of the wholesale energy crisis, 27 suppliers exited the market during Scheme Year 12²⁰.

For a household, the lesson is about where the risk sits. A supplier is a billing and hedging business, not an infrastructure provider, and its failure is absorbed by the market and by public arrangements rather than by the individual account holder.

Getting help: the helpline and where to take a dispute

With Bulb gone, the route for a problem depends on what the problem is. If you have a case open with the Energy Ombudsman, they will contact you to discuss next steps². For anything arising since the transfer, the first step is the supplier that now holds your account.

Ofgem's guidance lists the issues to raise with your energy supplier²¹:

• Late, incorrect or missing bills
• Back billing
• Being overcharged
• A faulty meter
• Poor customer service
• Refusing to refund credit from your account

If the supplier does not resolve it, the Energy Ombudsman may be able to help with an unresolved dispute²². The Ombudsman's most common dispute types are gas and electricity bills, smart meters and Feed-in Tariffs, customer service, problems arising from switching supplier, the way an energy product or service has been sold including doorstep sales, and the supply of energy to a home²³. A consumer can register a dispute after complaining to the energy company if a final decision or deadlock letter is received, or eight weeks have passed without resolution²⁴. Where a complaint about a Supplier of Last Resort transfer is unresolved after eight weeks, the consumer can pursue dispute resolution through the Energy Ombudsman⁶.

The Ombudsman can tell suppliers to take practical action such as crediting or cancelling an account or changing your tariff, to make an apology, or to offer a financial award, or a combination of these, and can make recommendations to prevent the issue happening again²². Suppliers can also be required to offer financial compensation, an apology, an agreement to fix the problem, a refund, or an affordable payment plan²¹.

For broader help, Citizens Advice offers information and support on a range of topics, including struggling to pay bills, problems with a supplier or supply, saving energy at home, and getting a better energy deal¹³. Ofgem also publishes guidance on getting help with energy bills¹³, and on checking whether you are owed money on your energy bill⁸. Small and microbusiness energy bill support runs through a separate government helpline¹².