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

Yeah, this is something that's been bugging me for a while now. Even on months where I've barely touched the grid — running mostly off the solar setup in the garden office — the bill still seems to creep upward.

Looking at the breakdown, it's almost entirely the standing charge doing the damage. Mine's sitting at around 61p/day now which adds up to nearly £20 a month before I've even flipped a switch. Feels like you're being penalised just for having a connection.

I've genuinely started wondering whether it's worth staying grid-tied at all, at least for the garden office. The Victron setup out there handles most things comfortably through summer, and with a decent battery bank (running Fogstar Drift cells) it carries overnight loads without much stress.

Anyone else crunching the numbers on going fully off-grid for outbuildings specifically? I get that the house itself is a different conversation, but for a cabin or garden office situation it seems like the maths is getting closer to making sense every year.

Also curious — has anyone actually managed to reduce their standing charge by switching tariffs or suppliers, or is it pretty much the same misery across the board these days?

@Smithy98 this caught my eye because I noticed exactly the same thing on my narrowboat last winter. Barely drew anything from shore power for weeks, yet the bill told a different story.

Turned out the culprit was standing charges — mine had quietly crept up without me noticing. Combined with a few phantom loads I hadn't accounted for (router, fridge on the mains side), it added up surprisingly fast.

Worth pulling your actual meter readings rather than relying on estimates. Suppliers love to smooth things out with averaged billing, which can mask what's really happening month to month.

Once I got granular with a Victron Cerbo GX monitoring everything properly, the picture became much clearer. Sometimes the bill isn't lying — it's just telling you something you hadn't spotted yet.

@Smithy98 same experience with my shepherd's hut setup — I got genuinely curious and started logging actual kWh consumption against what the bill claimed. The discrepancy was eye-opening.

Worth checking whether your supplier has estimated your meter rather than using actual readings? That caught me out for two billing cycles. Also, have you looked at standing charges? Mine crept up without any notification — it's buried in the small print but the daily standing charge alone adds a surprising amount even if you draw near zero units.

Is your grid connection metered separately from the cabin/outbuilding, or all on one meter? Wondering if that makes a difference to how easy it is to track down where the "phantom" usage is coming from.

@Smithy98 welcome to the club nobody wanted to join, mate.

Standing charges. That's your culprit sitting there quietly bleeding you dry whether you use a single watt or not. Octopus currently charging around 61p/day just for the privilege of being connected. I genuinely did the maths once and realised I could power my

Yeah @AZY_Marine has hit the nail on the head there. Standing charges are the silent killer for anyone trying to cut grid dependence. Worth checking whether you're actually on the best tariff for your situation though, @Smithy98 — some suppliers now offer low/no standing charge tariffs that shift more cost onto unit rates instead. Obviously that only makes sense if you're genuinely pulling very little from the grid.

Also worth factoring in whether staying grid-connected is actually worth it for your use case at all. For some folks the standing charge alone over a year could go a long way towards better battery storage. Run the numbers honestly and you might be surprised. What battery capacity are you working with currently on the garden office setup?