Anyone else notice their electricity bill went up even after going off-grid partially?

Yeah, this catches a lot of people out and it drives me absolutely mental seeing the same confusion repeated every few months on here.

The standing charge is the killer nobody talks about. You can generate 100% of your own power from April through August, still paying £300+ a year just to remain connected to the grid. SSE bumped mine up again last quarter — it's borderline extortion for what amounts to a copper wire and a meter nobody reads.

Then there's the reactive load problem. People partially off-grid still tend to pull from the grid during winter evenings when their battery bank (if they even have one sized properly) is depleted. Those short, high-demand draws often land in peak tariff windows. Net result: fewer units consumed, but a weirdly similar or higher bill.

My setup is a Victron MultiPlus II with Fogstar Drift cells, and I track every kWh obsessively — hence the username. Even I saw my standing charge costs balloon while my actual consumption dropped to almost nothing.

A few things worth checking:

• Are you on the right tariff for partial off-grid use?
• Have you considered dropping to a single-phase low-usage tariff?
• Is your inverter actually prioritising solar/battery before pulling grid?

The honest answer for a lot of people is that partial off-grid can cost more in the short term until the setup is properly optimised. Going fully off-grid and ditching the connection entirely is the only real escape from standing charges, but that's not realistic for most.

Anyone else actually done the maths on cutting the connection completely? Curious what others are finding.

@SOC_Nerd yeah the standing charge thing is brutal. Even if you use zero units you're still paying ~£1/day just to stay connected.

For the cabin I just cut the cord entirely - much cleaner. But the van's obviously off-grid by default anyway.

The bit that gets me is people offsetting with solar but still running gas boilers, electric showers etc so their actual grid draw barely shifts. Standing charge stays the same, bill looks almost identical.

Worth doing the maths properly before assuming partial solar = lower bill. Sometimes you're genuinely better going full off-grid or at least questioning whether the grid connection earns its keep anymore.

@SOC_Nerd been there. First year on the boat I was dead chuffed cutting my unit consumption by about 70%, then stared at the bill like 🤔

Standing charge wiped out most of the saving. Genuinely considered going full disconnect just to spite them.

Worth knowing — if you're on a pre-payment meter some suppliers offer lower standing charges, and there are a handful of tariffs specifically for low-usage properties. Takes some digging but they exist.

Also @GeoffRobinson if you're barely pulling any grid units, the maths on full disconnection starts looking tasty pretty quick. DNO will charge you to disconnect but you claw it back fast. Did mine two seasons ago, no regrets.

@SOC_Nerd oh this takes me right back to my first winter with the static caravan setup! I'd wired in this beautiful little Victron system, Fogstar batteries, the works — sat there feeling incredibly smug watching the solar harvest numbers...

Then the bill arrived and I nearly spat my tea out.

What nobody had warned me was that my EV was still pulling from the grid overnight because I'd never got round to scheduling it properly. So I'd added a massive load whilst patting myself on the back for saving on the kettle ⚡

Check your EV charging schedule if you've got one — it's genuinely the sneaky culprit I see mentioned least. My unit consumption on everything else dropped beautifully, but that one oversight basically cancelled six months of solar gains.

Sometimes the system isn't broken, you've just not closed all the gaps yet.

@GrumpySparky that 70% reduction feeling followed by bill-staring pain is painfully familiar mate 😄

Same thing hit me on the boat — spent an embarrassing amount on Victron kit, Fogstar cells, the works. Proper proud of myself. Then sat there with the bill like a dog that's been shown a card trick.

The real kicker nobody mentions beyond the standing charge is that your remaining grid usage often shifts to higher-tariff periods because you've already harvested everything useful during cheap/sunny hours. So your per-unit average actually creeps up while consumption drops.

Took me two billing cycles to clock it. Now I time the big stuff — EV charging, laundry — deliberately around my battery state rather than letting it default to peak hours out of habit.

Sometimes going partial off-grid just means paying the same money more cleverly rather than paying less outright.

@SOC_Nerd this is basically the plot of my van conversion journey condensed into one thread 😅

Spent six months obsessing over every watt — twin Fogstar 200Ah lithiums, Victron MPPT, the whole shrine — genuinely proud of myself. Then kept the house connection "just for emergencies."

Spoiler: standing charges don't care about your emergencies.

The penny finally dropped when I realised I was essentially paying Scottish Power a monthly retainer to exist on their network. Like hiring a personal chef and then eating cereal.

The actual fix for me was brutal honesty about what "partial off-grid" really means financially. Run the numbers on whether your annual standing charge alone justifies keeping that connection versus properly committing. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you're just paying for the comfort blanket of a backup.

No shame in the blanket, but know what it's costing you.