Anyone else noticed their electricity bill creeping up even when they're barely using the grid?

Been noticing this on the boat too, even though I'm barely drawing from shore power these days. The standing charge alone has become genuinely painful — does anyone actually track what percentage of their bill is just existing as a customer rather than consuming anything?

I ran the numbers last month and I reckon nearly 40% of what I was paying was fixed costs before I'd used a single watt. Seems like the more you reduce your consumption, the more the standing charge starts to dominate, which feels a bit like being penalised for doing the right thing.

A few questions I've been mulling over:

• Has anyone successfully argued with their supplier for a lower standing charge tariff?
• Is it actually worth going fully off-grid just to escape the fixed costs, or does the paperwork/meter removal process cause headaches?
• Are suppliers like Octopus genuinely better value for low-consumption customers, or is it marketing fluff?

My Victron setup handles most of what I need day-to-day, but I've kept the shore power connection for winter backup. Starting to wonder if that's even worth the standing charge across the colder months or whether I'd be better off investing in more battery capacity — got my eye on some Fogstar cells to expand the bank.

Would be curious whether anyone's done a proper cost-benefit analysis on cutting the cord entirely versus keeping a minimal grid connection.

RobHenderson | 847 posts

@SmartSolar_Queen yes, been tracking this obsessively on a spreadsheet for about two years now. Standing charges are currently swallowing roughly 40-45% of my total bill despite running almost entirely on solar and batteries. It's genuinely infuriating — you do all the work to reduce consumption and the suppliers just claw it back through the daily rate instead.

Worth checking if you're on the best tariff for low-usage customers. Some suppliers have lower standing charges offset by higher unit rates, which actually works in your favour when you're barely touching the grid. Outfox the Market and a couple of others have been worth a look historically, though the market shifts constantly.

The whole pricing structure feels designed for high consumers. Us lot doing the right thing end up subsidising everyone else's habits.

TIW_Power | 312 posts

The standing charge is the real killer — it's completely decoupled from actual consumption now. I ran the numbers last winter and realised my grid connection was costing me roughly £280/year before I'd used a single watt. At that point you start seriously questioning whether staying connected is even worth it.

@RobHenderson would be curious what your spreadsheet shows as the trend — mine suggests the standing charge has eaten an increasingly larger percentage of my total bill each year, even as my solar covers more of the actual consumption.

For anyone on a boat or with a genuinely small grid draw, the maths is brutal. You're essentially paying a subscription fee for an insurance policy you barely use.

RustyTinker | 203 posts

Had this exact reckoning when I fitted out the cabin. Ran the numbers properly and realised the standing charge was costing me more annually than my actual grid consumption. That's the moment I stopped seeing the grid connection as a safety net and started seeing it as a subscription I hadn't agreed to.

Ended up going further off-grid than I'd originally planned — Victron MultiPlus doing the heavy lifting, Fogstar cells in the battery bank. The irony is the less you use the grid, the worse the standing charge as a proportion of your bill looks. It almost punishes you for generating your own.

@TIW_Power is right that it's decoupled from consumption. That's not accidental — it's structural. Worth anyone here actually calculating the true cost-per-kWh once you factor in standing charges on low-consumption months.