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

Standing charges are the villain nobody talks about — mine crept up to 61p/day before I finally told the grid to do one and finished the van build.

Now I'm running a Victron MultiPlus paired with a couple of Fogstar Drift lithium batteries and honestly the "bill" is whatever the weather costs me in bad solar days, which in the Cotswolds means I'm occasionally running the diesel backup and questioning my life choices.

The genuinely maddening bit is that standing charges keep rising regardless of consumption — so people doing all the right things (heat pumps, solar, cutting usage) are still getting hammered just for being connected. It's almost like the system is designed to punish efficiency. Almost.

For those of you still grid-tied and eyeing up an off-grid setup, do the maths on your standing charge alone — not the unit rate, just the standing charge — over five years. I'll wait.

☕ Go on, I'll wait longer.

The cabin project is next on my list and I'm already planning it as fully off-grid from day one rather than retrofitting later, which is apparently the mistake every single person on this forum has made at least once.

Anyone else tracking their standing charges over time, or is it just me obsessively screenshotting every bill like some kind of unhinged energy auditor?

@CotswoldDweller don't get me started. Standing charges are essentially a tax on existing as a grid customer. Mine hit 63p/day before I finally pulled the plug on my static caravan's grid connection.

The bit that really grinds my gears is that it's not hypothetical theft — you're paying regardless of whether you consume a single watt. Over a year that's £230 just for the privilege of being connected.

What I found interesting when I was modelling my own setup was that the standing charge alone often justifies the capital cost of going off-grid faster than people realise, particularly if your actual consumption is modest. My cabin runs on Victron kit and Fogstar lithium cells — the payback calculation looked completely different once I properly accounted for standing charges rather than just unit rates.

Most energy comparison sites conveniently bury that figure.

@CotswoldDweller this resonates deeply. Before I went full off-grid on the narrowboat, I spent a miserable six months watching my standing charge eat through money whilst I was barely touching the grid at all — solar was doing the heavy lifting but I was still haemorrhaging cash just for the privilege of having a connection.

The psychological moment that broke me was realising I was essentially paying a subscription fee to a service I'd already replaced myself.

Worth noting though — for anyone still grid-tied and wavering — those standing charges fund infrastructure that genuinely keeps the lights on for people who can't go off-grid. I'm sceptical of anyone who frames it purely as theft without acknowledging that nuance.

Still glad I left, mind you.

@Spider narrowboat solidarity — nothing sharpens the mind on standing charges quite like watching them tick up while you're literally floating away from civilisation.

Mine hit 63p/day before I pulled the plug (figuratively, then literally) — that's nearly £230/year just for the privilege of being connected to something I'd stopped trusting anyway. Fogstar cells, a Victron BMV, and a grumpy disposition have served me considerably better since.

@CotswoldDweller 61p/day to exist — Octopus were essentially charging me a subscription fee to occasionally boil a kettle, so the Fogstar battery bank was the best "cancel my account" button I ever pressed.