How can I switch from a business / commercial electricity supply to a domestic?

i have a domestic Ovo supplied meter in the house and a  business SSE one with three phase in the detached garage, used very little but expensive.  There is no business use and I've never used three phase. It was for a pottery hobby of a previous owner.  I was told when I moved in 20 years ago the two could be merged but didn't bother.  How do I get to a single domestic supply?  The meters are in different buildings.  SSE saying not possible.

Hey @DrDR ,

I think the best solution in this case would be to ask the current supplier (SSE’s business side of things) to convert the supply to a Domestic supply and then move it to a Domestic supplier like OVO. It shouldn’t be too difficult to do.

Alternatively, switch the business supply to someone who offers both sides and get them to swap it to a Domestic supply. E.On Next has previously confirmed on the OVO Forum that they’re capable of doing this even if you don’t want to stay with them after the swap as you’ll then be able to stick or switch to any Domestic supplier of your choosing.

Their Community Manager is effectively a friend of the forum so we’re able to get her advice on some of these things.

I can’t think of an easy way to merge both supplies into one without some serious rewiring work, so it’s probably cheaper and easier to keep them as two separate supplies.

Hope this helps.

If you want a single supply you need to have one of them disconnected. The obvious one to disconnect is the garage.

If you still need electricity in the garage you will need to run a cable from your house and have an electrician connect it to the consumer units at each end. How difficult it is depends on how far the garage is from the house.

We used to have a business and so all my meters are commercial. Should I change to a domestic meter or will it make it more expensive?

Hi @NatS , I’m fairly sure that OVO don’t offer commercial contracts. That might be a restriction. 
As to the balance between domestic and commercial, it probably depends on your consumption 

From what I understand, you probably will be better off on a Domestic supplier and tariff. It’d get rid of all the extra hidden fees and apply certain types of protections that you don’t get on a Non-Domestic tariff like the price caps.

To do this, please switch to a supplier that serves both Domestic and Non-Domestic customers as you are now, then make the request to their customer service to be migrated to Domestic supply. They’ll do the rest (hopefully). After that’s all done, you should have access to all Domestic tariffs including the ones OVO offers.

Hope that helps!

Hi can you help I am with Opus just brought the property a fame building to convert into residential but it has a half an hour meter, £2200 every 2 months! Spoke to them and they are refusing to change over to residential as they do not offer that service anymore. I have called other providers and they say I must be changed over from business to residential before changing. 

Hi @Amycarrigan ,

Beki doesn’t work at E.On Next anymore so she won’t be able to respond.

The best option is to switch to a provider that offers both Business and Domestic supplies and initially keep the account as a Business account. Once you’re on-supply, you can request to switch to Domestic which should then let you stick with that supplier or jump to any Domestic supplier of your choosing.

Either way, you need to switch away from Opus anyway - it looks like they’re shutting up shop soon and have completely terminated ALL sales - and they were always a Non-Domestic Only supplier anyway so wouldn’t have been able to flip the switch regardless.

Hi @Amycarrigan,

I can see our forum volunteer has given some good advice here already. Hope it was helpful.

Please let us know how you get on with this.

Thank you so much for the advice, I moved to Ovo yesterday and had the best advice from them regarding contacting UK power network and reducing my bill by almost half, still on business half hour charge at moment but Ovo can supply both commercial and residential so fingers crossed I can get it changed over soon.. 

Again thanks for the advice, much appreciated