Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) has reported profits for the last financial year

SSE, the UK’s second largest energy generator, and one of the largest suppliers, announced a pre-tax profit rise of 1.6% to £1.3bn.

The company said that rising wholesale energy costs had hit profits last year.

Scottish and Southern also added that they produced a smaller amount of energy from renewable resources than expected, which also had an effect on earnings in the year ending March 31st.

SSE attributed this lower level of generation to “still and dry” weather conditions in the early months of 2011, which lead electricity consumption to fall by 2.5%.

In terms of growth, the company grew its customer base by 300,000 to 9.6m. Half of the cash invested by SSE last year was in renewable energy.

SSE have followed British Gas owner Centrica’s warning of price rises, stating forward wholesale price rises of as much as 33% as the reason.

SSE also said they plan to continue to invest heavily in renewable energy projects such as wind farms in the next year.