The company was established as the consumer division of Innogy plc from the operations of
National Power, when the overseas operations were demerged as
International Power plc in October 2000. Innogy plc then went on to purchase the
regional electricity company Yorkshire Electricity in February 2001. It later disposed of the distribution side of Yorkshire Electricity to
CE Electric UK in exchange for the supply business of
Northern Electric. Innogy plc was taken over by the German energy company
RWE in March 2002, and renamed RWE Npower plc with all the supply business adopting the "npower" brand. In February 2006, Npower acquired 19% of
Telecom Plus, a business which now provides Npower with management services, such as billing, customer service, metering, debt collection and administration: under the deal Npower can increase its stake in Telecom Plus up to 29%. In February 2009, Npower acquired Superior Plumbing, a business providing services to social housing and business customers across the United Kingdom. In February 2009, Npower acquired SPI Group to add to its energy services business Npower Hometeam. SPI provides services to the social housing market and its commercial arm serves public buildings, including schools. In November 2013, however, Npower sold the two former Telecom Plus subsidiaries back to
Utility Warehouse for £218 million. As a result, Utility Warehouse became one of the largest independent energy suppliers in the United Kingdom. The deal also sparked commentary about the possibility of Npower's parent company RWE leaving the United Kingdom, or the emergence of a "Big Seven" in place of the existing
Big Six Energy Suppliers. In March 2016, the company announced losses of £106 million and 2,500 global job cuts, as well as moving over 1,000 back office jobs to India, along with the fact that they had lost 351,000 customers in 2015: a high level of customer complaints were cited as reasons for the issues. On 1 April 2016, RWE split off its renewable energy, network and retail businesses into the newly formed
Innogy SE. Npower became a subsidiary of the new business and was renamed Npower Limited. The coal, natural gas and oil-fired energy power stations, which Npower operated, are no longer part of Npower, but of
RWE Generation UK plc.
Proposed merger/demerger of retail supply division In November 2017, Innogy and rival
SSE announced a planned merger of Npower's residential and business retail business with SSE's residential energy supply and home services business in Great Britain to create a new company listed on the London Stock Exchange. SSE plan to divest its 65.6% holding in the business to its shareholders and Innogy would own the remainder. The merger received preliminary regulatory clearance from the
Competition and Markets Authority on 30 August 2018, and full clearance was given on 10 October 2018. In December 2018, it was announced that the merger would no longer be going ahead, with both companies blaming the recent government price caps, business performance and tough market conditions.
Acquisition by E.ON Just after the failed merger of SSE/Npower in December 2018, it was reported that the
Big Six energy suppliers would still consolidate to the Big Five, as Npower would be acquired by default by
E.ON UK, due to the already planned asset swap of the respective German parents
Innogy and
E.ON. Npower announced in January 2019 that it would cut nine hundred jobs to save costs because of "an incredibly tough" retail energy market, and a government price cap. On 29 November 2019 it was announced that over 4,500 jobs would be axed at npower and the brand was to be wound down, with customers being migrated to E.ON UK as part of
E.On Next. This ultimately meant the complete closure of npower as an energy company for residential customers. In 2021, the npower brand can now only be seen in the market trading as npower Business Solutions to over 20,000 businesses across the UK. ==Operations==