Energy retailer tells more than 70,000 customers to go elsewhere or face doubling of prices

theguardian.com:

Tens of thousands of customers of an electricity retailer have been told to find a new supplier or face a doubling in prices within days as the toll from soaring wholesale prices grows. Related issues in the gas sector have also prompted regulators to act.

Just days after the energy regulator ordered increases of as much as 18% for household and small business power prices, New Zealand-based ReAmped Energy has taken the unusual step of telling its 70,000-plus customers across eastern Australia to take their contracts elsewhere.

“The markets are just rocketing every day,” Luke Blincoe, ReAmped’s chief executive, said. “The best thing we can do is advise customers to look somewhere else because the price increases that we will need to put through are so significant that we just would rather they were elsewhere and getting better deals.”

Wholesale power prices more than doubled in the March quarter from a year earlier for eastern states. Higher fuel prices from Covid-related disruptions and, more recently, sanctions in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were the main drivers, while outages of as much as one-third of coal power capacity have added to the woes.

ReAmped said it told its customers to shift “before it’s too late”, because several retailers have already started “to pull up the drawbridge”. Those who remain can expect a doubling in prices within the next week as the company resets costs.

Blincoe said the big three retailers – AGL, EnergyAustralia and Origin – all stand to retake market share since they also controlled generation, and