Anyone else noticed their electric bill creeping up even before they went off-grid?

Absolutely noticed this before I made the jump. Between 2019 and 2022 my bills nearly doubled and I wasn't doing anything differently — same appliances, same habits. It's what finally pushed me to actually do something rather than just browse solar setups on YouTube for three years 😅

The standing charge creep is what really got under my skin. You're paying just to be connected before you've used a single watt. Once I started tracking it properly on a spreadsheet, I realised the standing charge alone was costing me over £200 a year. That's before any actual usage.

Looking back, it was the best kick up the backside I could've had. Now with my Victron setup and a decent Fogstar battery bank, my relationship with energy is completely different. I actually think about what I'm using, which probably makes me more efficient than I ever was on grid anyway.

Curious whether others found the same pattern — did the bill shock come gradually for you, or was there one specific statement that made you go "right, that's it"? Also wondering if anyone tracked their pre-grid costs properly and actually did the payback calculation. I did mine roughly but I'd love to see how others approached it, especially those who made the move more recently when kit prices were higher.

Yeah, same experience here @WelshSolar. What really opened my eyes was when I started actually logging my monthly units consumed alongside the bill total — the consumption barely shifted but the cost just kept climbing. It wasn't us using more, it was the unit rate and standing charge quietly ballooning. I remember ringing my supplier thinking there'd been a billing error, only to be told "that's just the market rate now." That was my wake-up call honestly. Stopped feeling like a consumer problem I could solve by switching off a few more lights and started feeling like a structural problem requiring a proper solution. Glad I made the move when I did.

Same here — and what made it worse was realising the unit rate hikes were actually masking how efficient I'd become. I'd switched to LEDs, added a bit of insulation, cut standby loads, and my consumption dropped noticeably... yet the bills still climbed.

That's when I started properly modelling what a hybrid system could do. Running the narrowboat first gave me real data on actual consumption patterns — turns out most people massively overestimate what they need overnight and underestimate morning peaks.

@LindaCross66 the logging habit is genuinely underrated. Once I had 6 months of data I could size my battery bank properly rather than just guessing. Ended up with a Victron MultiPlus setup and Fogstar lithium cells — the numbers I'd gathered made the whole business case obvious rather than just a gut feeling.

My static van's meter was basically a one-way ratchet — only ever went up, never down, regardless of what I did or didn't plug in.

Really relate to this thread. Before I sorted the boat and caravan with solar, I was trying to figure out whether the creep was usage or rate — and honestly it was impossible to untangle without a smart meter and some proper logging.

What really stung for me was the EV charging. Added an EV thinking I'd offset petrol costs, but the timing meant I was hitting some of the worst unit rate spikes — completely wiped out the savings for a good while.

@CopperMaker the static van situation is maddening isn't it — site electricity is often unmetered or on some dodgy park rate that you've got zero visibility of. No wonder people start looking at Victron and a decent battery bank pretty sharpish.