We are responsible for managing 17 Service Providers on behalf of industry. As part of this role, we ensure all the services provided and/or funded by RECCo are cost-efficient and effective. A busy month lies ahead! Read on to find out all the updates and improvements planned across the different REC Services.
The Electricity Enquiry Service (EES) is formerly known as the Electricity Central Online Enquiry Service (ECOES) and is governed under the Retail Energy Code (REC).
The EES was designed to assist suppliers in the customer switching process by allowing the triangulation of data; it is also used to provide benefits to other REC Parties and non-REC Parties through the provision key retail market data.
On 10th January 2021 the Code Manager issued communications to all Master Administration Users and REC Contract Manager regarding a planned system upgrade change to the Electricity Enquiry Service (EES) and Secure Data Exchange Service (SDES) service.
The EES and SDES Service Provider replaced the hardware used to provide these services. This upgrade will ensure that the services remain fit for purpose as the new switching arrangements go-live, expected to be summer 2022, and will ensure they can be maintained for the coming years.
In line with the communication, you may need to take action in order to continue to access the services, depending on how your own systems are configured. Most organisations will be unaffected, but some security firewalls may be configured to only allow through certain IP addresses (‘whitelisting’).
The services will also be off-line for a short period while the system upgrade is undertaken.
The change will take place on Saturday 12 February 2022, starting at 08:00 and we expect it to be completed by 18:30 on the same day. These times are provisional and further information will be provided throughout the day as the work progresses. The new IP address can be added to your whitelist at any time ahead of our change.
The new IP address can be added to your whitelist at any time ahead of our change. Please ensure that the following details are forwarded to your organisation’s IT Department.
Services affected (urls): ecoes.co.uk; ecoes2.co.uk; mpas-online.com; mpas-online.co.uk.
New IP Address: 46.249.194.65
Current IP Address: 87.246.112.139 - do not remove this from the whitelist until the changes have been confirmed.
If you have any questions about the technical changes, please contact the EES Service Provider at support@candc-uk.com.
For any non-technical queries, please contact the code manager helpdesk at enquiries@recmanager.co.uk.
Energy Theft Tip-off Service
The Energy Theft Tip Off Service (ETTOS) is a REC service operated by Crimestoppers for members of the public to anonymously report suspected theft of gas and electricity.
Crimestoppers securely notify a tip-off to the relevant gas or electricity supplier for investigation. If the supplier cannot be identified, Crimestoppers will notify the relevant Gas Transporter or electricity Distribution Network Operator for further investigation.
To continue delivering a high quality, secure, and completely anonymous service, Crimestoppers has been upgrading the security for report dissemination. In our last edition we updated you on the planned ETTOS Security Upgrade Project.
This project entails improving the security with the delivery of ETTOS reports to REC Parties, as well as creating a more efficient process. The ETTOS Portal will be decommissioned, and reports will be sent directly to REC Parties mailboxes with TLS end-to-end encryption.
We are pleased to report that RECCo and Crimestoppers have been working diligently on this and the testing phase will begin during the week commencing 17 January with REC Parties, to ensure they are all able to receive their ETTOS reports with the new encryption in preparation for go live on 31 January 2022.
If you are a Supplier, Gas Transporter or Distribution Network Operator and haven’t submitted or confirmed your group mailbox for the reports to be sent to, please do so immediately by sending an email to Annette Booysen with your email address and company name/s, to Annette.Booysen@crimestoppers-uk.org.
Providing an email address is a required step to ensure you remain complaint with Condition 12A of the Energy Supply Licence. From 31 January 2022, your obligations will be (but not limited to):
RECCo’s Code Manager Service pulse survey closes.
In December 2021, we published the second of our ‘pulse’ surveys to understand stakeholders' experiences of the REC Code Manager Service, three months after operational go-live. The deadline for responses closed on 14th January 2022. This survey helps us understand how well the Code Manager service is functioning for stakeholders and where improvements should focus over coming months. We would like to thank all respondents for the valuable insights provided and we are now working closely with the code manager to review all feedback and formulate action plans where improvements are needed. We’ll provide a more detailed update on the responses received alongside what plans are in place to directly respond to the feedback received.
We are committed to ensuring all REC services are delivered efficiently and effectively and are able to meet the needs of you and your organisation now and in the future. If you have any feedback or suggestions for changes to any of the REC services, please get in touch with the team at info@retailenergycode.co.uk.
Crimestoppers also manage our Stay Energy Safe brand, and a major element of this platform is to create awareness for the dangers that surround energy theft with the public. We currently have two marketing campaigns that have gone live in 2021 and have been proving effective; these include a radio and a video advert.
Last month we rolled out Phase 1 of the ‘Tick Tock’ radio advert in the North East and North West of England. The advert has shown initial success with an uplift in reports ranging from 40% to 133% across the areas.
Phase 2 of the radio advert campaign launched on 10 January in the South East and South West of England and is scheduled to run for 4 weeks.
The radio advert can be found here, please feel free to share this link on your platforms to assist in raising awareness.
Once the radio advert campaign has been completed, there will be a new Out of Home (OOH ) campaign , which will consist of posters for billboards, bus shelters, phone box sites and inside buses and trams.
This will be rolled out in Manchester in the first instance to target the areas where a high number of ETTOS reports are received.
Post Implementation Project Update
Our aim has always been to deliver all key REC Services with a fit for purpose user experience. When we went live with the Code Manager Service on 1 September 2021, we established the Post Implementation Project to deliver a series of service enhancements and to resolve the remaining defects to improve the user experience.
We have made good progress on the PIP, implementing a number of enhancements within the Portal, with 3 of the 5 releases already delivering new Committee Management functionality and new Performance Assurance related functionality, including:
Status functionality uploading of party documentation and reports directly to the Portal to improve efficiencies in line with our core objective of digitalisation.
In the scheduled January and February Release we will see the remaining functionality implemented delivering further changes to:
The Code Manager will be updating the REC Parties directly on what these remaining releases will mean to you, and this will be shared via the ‘Weekly Bulletin’. The Code Manager will also be hosting a User Experience Workshop which is scheduled for 27th January and will be sharing details with stakeholders shortly.