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

Been noticing this too and it's genuinely baffling. My static caravan setup means I'm pulling very little from the grid most months — the Victron system handles the bulk of everything — yet the standing charges alone are now eye-watering.

Last quarter I used maybe 40-50 kWh from the grid total, but the bill still came in surprisingly high just from daily standing charges stacking up. Feels like you're being penalised for not using it.

I've been wondering whether it makes more sense to just go fully off-grid and ditch the connection altogether, but then there's the EV charging side of things to consider. On days when the solar isn't pulling its weight and the Fogstar batteries are low, having that grid backup for the car is still useful.

A few questions for anyone who's thought this through:

• Has anyone actually disconnected entirely and found a workable solution for EV charging on cloudy weeks?
• Are standing charges likely to keep rising, or is there any regulatory pressure pushing back against this?
• For motorhome users who don't even have a permanent connection, are you finding the occasional hook-up costs at sites have gone up too?

It feels like the whole pricing structure is designed around heavy consumption, and anyone trying to be sensible about their usage just ends up subsidising everyone else.

Would be interested to know if others are running the numbers on whether full disconnection actually pencils out financially at this point.

CraigLamb | 847 posts

@IvyWalker Completely relate to this. The standing charge is the silent killer — it's gone up considerably with most suppliers over the last couple of years and there's genuinely nothing you can do about it regardless of how little you actually draw. It's essentially a connection fee rather than a usage charge.

Worth checking if your supplier has changed your tariff without much fanfare too — happened to me last spring and I only noticed when I actually sat down with the bills side by side.

The frustrating reality is that the more self-sufficient you become, the more that fixed daily charge dominates your bill as a proportion. Almost makes you wonder whether full disconnection is worth seriously costing up. Have you looked at what your annual standing charge alone actually totals out?

WattLiz | 312 posts

@IvyWalker Has anyone actually looked into going fully off-grid to escape the standing charge entirely? I've been weighing this up for my motorhome setup — the maths starts looking interesting once your actual consumption drops low enough that you're essentially paying the standing charge for nothing.

Curious what your Victron is doing for battery storage — are you on LiFePO4? Because if your overnight draw is covered and you're grid-tied purely as a backup, is the standing charge actually worth keeping that safety net, or would a slightly bigger battery bank make it redundant?

What supplier are you on? Some of the smaller ones still have lower standing charges — I've seen figures varying quite a bit across tariffs recently.

FrankGibson | 1,204 posts

@WattLiz I did exactly that with the boat — cut the shore power connection entirely two summers ago. Genuinely liberating. The Victron MultiPlus paired with a decent Fogstar lithium bank meant I stopped worrying about what the meter was doing overnight.

The interesting wrinkle for me now is EV charging. I kept one grid connection purely because rapid-charging from solar alone on cloudy British weeks just isn't realistic yet. So I'm still paying that standing charge for essentially one use case.

If your static caravan setup doesn't need vehicle charging, @WattLiz, the maths for going fully off-grid starts looking very attractive very quickly — especially once you factor in standing charges compounding over a year. Run the numbers over 36 months and the battery investment often pays itself back faster than you'd expect.

BurnWalker | 203 posts

@FrankGibson same on the narrowboat — pulled the marina shore power hookup 18 months ago and haven't looked back. Standing charge was eating £25-30/month for virtually nothing.

Thing nobody mentions though: going fully off-grid shifts all the risk onto your own kit. One bad Fogstar battery cell or a dodgy MPPT and you're scrambling. Had a Victron SmartSolar throw a fault last February, middle of winter, minimal solar. Not fun.

@WattLiz it's absolutely worth considering but don't romanticise it. You need proper redundancy — backup charging source at minimum. On the static caravan that's harder than on a boat where you've got an engine alternator as fallback.

The standing charge racket is real but the grass isn't always greener.