Anyone else noticed their electricity bill go up again this month even being off-grid partially?

Still partly on the grid myself and yeah, the standing charge alone is now costing me more than my actual usage — absolute pisstake when you've got a Victron MultiPlus and a shed full of Fogstar cells doing most of the heavy lifting.

The irony of paying Octopus a tenner a month just to have the privilege of occasionally borrowing their electrons at 3am is not lost on me.

Honestly at this point I'm tempted to go full island mode — I've been dragging my feet on the final EV charging setup but the maths is starting to write itself. My tiny house runs almost entirely on solar from April through September, so I'm essentially funding the grid's existence out of sheer sentimentality.

Anyone else crunched the numbers on whether it's worth ditching the grid connection entirely? I know the Renogy crowd will say just add more panels but the standing charge issue is the real villain here — doesn't matter how many kWh you self-generate when they're taxing you just for having the wire attached to your wall.

Anyone actually gone full off-grid and cut the connection? What was the final straw?

Feels like the energy companies are charging us for the honour of having a backup we barely use — and yes, that pun was very much intended. 🔌

@RetiredElectrician74 the standing charge is basically Octopus/British Gas charging you a subscription fee to not use their electricity — peak subscription economy right there 😂

@RetiredElectrician74 the standing charge situation is genuinely maddening — I'm paying ~53p/day just to keep the grid connection as a backstop for the three or four grey weeks in January when my array can't keep up. Ran the numbers last winter and it actually costs more to maintain the connection than the grid electricity I pulled through it.

The calculation that finally broke my brain: my Fogstar battery bank covers about 4 days of autonomy. Standing charge over those same 4 days? More than the emergency top-up would've cost me at peak rate anyway.

Seriously considering whether a properly sized second string and another 5kWh of storage would let me cut the cord entirely. The maths is almost there — just that horrible February gap that keeps me hesitant.

@RetiredElectrician74 standing charge exists so the grid companies can still afford their executive bonuses whilst you sit there running everything off a Victron and a prayer.

@RetiredElectrician74 know exactly how you feel — when I was in the transition phase before going fully van-based it was the standing charge that finally pushed me over the edge to cut the cord completely. Felt mad paying just to exist on the grid.

If full off-grid isn't an option yet, worth looking at whether your usage profile suits Agile Octopus — some folk here have managed to at least offset the standing charge pain by hammering cheap overnight rates to top up batteries.

Not ideal but buys you time while you figure out the full exit plan 🔌

@RetiredElectrician74 this is exactly what pushed me over the edge to think seriously about the boat setup. I was at that maddening crossroads — paying standing charges whilst my Victron was sat there perfectly capable of handling everything.

What finally clicked for me was treating the grid connection like an insurance policy and actually costing it properly. Once I mapped out twelve months of standing charges against what I actually drew from the grid, the numbers were almost comical. I was essentially paying Octopus a monthly retainer to deliver about four kettle-boils worth of electricity.

The EV charging wrinkle complicated things for me specifically — that's where grid access still earns its keep on certain tariffs. But for pure household load? The maths increasingly doesn't stack up in the grid's favour.

@RetiredElectrician74 the standing charge situation is genuinely infuriating from a technical standpoint — you're essentially paying a fixed fee to maintain access to a backup resource you may rarely use, which becomes increasingly difficult to justify once your Victron system is handling the heavy lifting.

What I'd actually look at is whether your real usage pattern warrants staying connected at all versus absorbing the cost of proper backup capacity instead. I ran the numbers on my own setup before committing fully — standing charge over 12 months versus the capital cost of an additional battery bank to cover genuine emergencies. The maths surprised me.

Worth logging your actual grid draw over a full billing cycle and seeing how many kWh you're genuinely pulling versus what the standing charge implies. Most people find the crossover point arrives sooner than expected once they're rigorous about it.

@RetiredElectrician74 yeah the standing charge thing is the real kicker isn't it. I'm still tethered to grid at the house plot and it's basically just paying for the privilege of having a wire connected. My actual draw is almost nothing since I sorted the Victron setup but the standing charge just sits there bleeding money regardless.

Seriously tempted to just go full disconnect and rely on the motorhome system as backup for the rare occasions I need extra capacity. Done the maths twice and it's marginal but probably worth it just on principle.