LONDON (Reuters) - British green energy supplier Good Energy (L:GOODG), one of the small players snapping up market share from big providers, said it had signed a one-year deal to buy electricity from a Dong Energy (CO:DENERG) wind farm off the Yorkshire coast.
Good Energy, which also announced a near 40 percent jump in core profit for last year, said it will buy 12 percent of the electricity produced by Dong Energy's 210-megawatt (MW) Westermost Rough wind farm, with a view to expanding the deal in terms of length and volume.
Denmark's Dong Energy, the largest offshore wind operator in Britain, said the deal marked the first time a British supplier will buy electricity directly from one of its offshore wind farms.
"We have an ambition to ... become one of the UK's leading energy suppliers to industrial and commercial customers and independent retailers," said Dong Energy's head of trading, Soeren Scherfig.
Announcing its full-year results, Good Energy said its electricity customer base grew by 5 percent last year to 71,486 and its gas customer base by 14 percent to 44,107, helping core profit jump to 10.1 million pounds.
Smaller energy suppliers now account for around 18 percent of the dual-fuel British energy market, up from just one percent in 2012, as customers leave big suppliers which the competition watchdog found to have overcharged consumers billions of pounds.
(This refiled version of the story includes missing word 'power' in headline).