It is one of the county's biggest private employers and is headed up by one of its most high-profile bosses, but it has not shouted about its latest set of accounts.

Just filed at Companies House the most recent report by the Stroud headquartered firm are likely to make many turn its favourite colour, green - but mostly with envy.

They show Ecotricity, the company famously started by the high-profile Dale Vince, enjoyed a £50m increase in turnover - from £126,446,000 to £175,739,000.

And that was achieved despite a fall in customer numbers for its core green electricity business, although its numbers of business customers increased.

"The increase is mainly due to the strong trading performance in the electricity and supply business and was also assisted by higher wind volumes in our generating portfolio," said the report.

Much of the growth was in the group's renewables energy company, where turnover grew 38.9 per cent to £165,319,000 - up from £118,990,000 in 2017.

There was a 74.1 per cent increase in gross profit in the current year, rising from £31,579,000 to £55,018,000. Operating profit grew by £8,593,000 to £510,000 on an operating loss of £8,083,000 in 2017.

Customer numbers were "skewed by a single customer, with approximately 15,000 underlying customers as at the end of 2017, which switched away by mutual consent towards the end of the 2018 financial year.

"Removing this customer from the calculation shows that customer numbers increased year-on-year by 4.4per cent."

Business customer volume (gas and electric combined) grew year-on-year to 2018 by 62 per cent to 495 GWh. Business customer numbers grew by 12 per cent.

"This growth was primarily due to increased sales focus on higher volume business customers, specifically half-hourly metered customers, which are typically businesses with high individual consumption values."

The group gave £416,000 to charity during the financial year - up from £308,000 in 2017.

This included £378,000 to the Green Britain Foundation and £9,000 to Sustainability in Sport Foundation, both charities of which Mr Vince is a director.

It currently has 22 wind parks and one solar park. Its Alverston wind park (6.9MW) became operational during the second half of 2018.