How to switch electricity providers
Switching retail providers is an administrative change, not a physical one. Nothing is installed, nothing is disconnected, and nobody needs to visit your home.
What happens
You enrol with a new retailer. They send a switch request to your delivery utility, which updates the record of who is responsible for billing the energy at your meter. The switch takes effect on a scheduled meter read, and the same wires deliver the same electricity before and after.
You do not need to contact your old retailer. The switch request handles it, and initiating a switch is what ends the old relationship.
Your power is not interrupted at any point. There is no gap, no reconnection, and no service call.
What you will need
Your service address, and usually the ESI ID for your meter — a long identifier that appears on your current bill and identifies your specific meter to the utility. Most enrolment flows can look it up from your address, but having the bill in front of you makes it faster.
Retailers generally run a credit check at enrolment, which can result in a deposit requirement. That is a decision between you and the retailer; it is not something a comparison site can predict or influence.
Timing it properly
The one thing worth planning is your current contract's end date. Switching before it expires can trigger an early termination fee; letting it expire without a replacement rolls you onto a month-to-month rate that is usually much higher.
The comfortable window is to shop in the last month of your term and schedule the new plan to start as the old one ends. Most retailers will let you set a future start date for exactly this reason.
Where a switch is made from
The enrolment happens on a plan listing rather than here, and it begins with the delivery area you are in.
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