A UK energy supplier with about 90,000 customers has gone bust, blaming a “perfect storm” of soaring wholesale prices and squeezed customers, on the day households face another increase in gas and electricity bills.

Rebel Energy, which serves about 80,000 households and 10,000 business customers, will cease trading immediately and leave the industry regulator to find a new supplier for its customers.

Its failure comes about three years after soaring gas prices triggered a spate of energy company failures, with most than 30 going bust.

Rebel was founded in 2019 by Dan Bates, a former energy trader with oil giant BP, to “make things fairer for customers and the planet”.

In a social media post Bates said: “Rebel Energy has been facing a perfect storm of rising wholesale costs during January and February together with the pressure of the cost of living crisis on our customers.”

Bates said the company was “regrettably” not able to raise the required capital in the short period of time to secure the future of the business “ultimately means that Rebel Energy will be going out of business”.

Rebel’s collapse comes weeks after the regulator Ofgem began disciplinary action against the company over concerns that it had not properly ringfenced the money it had collected from customers to be used to support renewable energy subsidies.

In a post on LinkedIn Bates said that he would “take the time to plan my next steps, although please DM me with any opportunities”.

Ofgem has urged Rebel Energy’s customers to take a meter reading for their gas and electricity use, and wait to hear from their new supplier, which will be appointed within days.

The supplier failure was announced on the same day that millions of households face a 6.4% or £111 energy bill increase to an average of £1,849 a year after the regulator raised the energy price cap.

The price cap has climbed for three consecutive quarters, and means households are paying about £600 a year more for their gas and electricity than before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago.

The surge in global gas prices caused around 30 small UK energy suppliers to go bust during late 2021 and early 2022, including Bulb Energy. Prior to Rebel’s collapse, the last failure was UK Energy Incubator Hub in July 2022. Since then Ofgem has taken measures to bar companies from entering the market unless they can prove that they are financially robust.

Tim Jarvis, a director at Ofgem, said: “We have worked hard to improve the financial resilience of suppliers in recent years, implementing a series of rules to make sure they can weather unexpected shocks. But like any competitive market, some companies will still fail from time to time, and our priority is making sure consumers are protected if that happens.

“Rebel Energy customers do not need to worry, and I want to reassure them that they will not see any disruption to their energy supply, and any credit they may have on their accounts remains protected under Ofgem’s rules.

“We are working quickly to appoint new suppliers for all impacted customers. We’d advise customers not to try to switch supplier in the meantime, and a new supplier will be in touch in the coming weeks with further information.”