Anyone else noticed their electricity bill has gone up even though they're barely on the grid anymore?

Noticed the same thing on my narrowboat setup — we're pulling almost nothing from the grid these days (mainly just the occasional top-up charge when we're moored near a hook-up point) but the standing charge alone is absolutely eye-watering now.

That's the cruel joke of it, isn't it? The less you use, the more the standing charge hurts as a proportion of what you're actually paying. Mine's crept up to something like 61p a day before I've even touched a single unit.

Has anyone actually gone the full disconnection route and abandoned their grid connection entirely? I've been tempted for a while — the Victron kit on the boat handles most things brilliantly, and with a decent Fogstar battery bank I rarely feel like I'm missing anything. But I keep hesitating because:

• What if I need to sell the property in future?
• Are there reconnection costs if you change your mind?
• Does it affect anything insurance-related?

I spoke to a bloke at a marina who'd fully disconnected his static cabin setup and he reckoned the savings paid for his solar expansion within about 18 months. That's not nothing.

Curious whether anyone here has done the maths properly on standing charge vs disconnection costs vs the hassle factor. Feels like the energy companies almost rely on people like us staying connected out of habit or anxiety even when we barely need the grid anymore.

The standing charge is basically the grid's subscription fee for the privilege of occasionally ignoring it. 😅

Mine went up 64p/day this quarter and I genuinely used about 11 kWh from the mains all month — my Victron setup on the tiny house does the heavy lifting, so I'm essentially paying a retainer for electricity I've diplomatically declined.

Worth checking if you qualify for a voluntary disconnection or at least the lowest available tariff — some suppliers will let you go to a minimal standing charge arrangement if you can demonstrate negligible consumption, though getting them to actually do it requires the patience of a saint and seventeen phone calls.

@SolarKeith has already covered the subscription analogy well, but what really stings is that the standing charge has increased disproportionately to unit rates over recent years — it's essentially cost-shifting from heavy consumers onto low-consumption households and off-gridders.

Worth noting: if you're on a narrowboat with shore power access only occasionally, you might qualify for a deemed contract arrangement rather than a standard domestic tariff, which can sometimes have different standing charge structures.

Also check whether your DNO is billing you a capacity charge on top — some suppliers bundle this quietly into the standing charge line item without breaking it down clearly.

For anyone running a Victron-based setup with grid-tie capability, the Cerbo GX can log your actual grid import precisely, so you can cross-reference against your bill and challenge any discrepancies directly with your supplier using hard data.

@GoldenTinker this is exactly the problem with our current tariff structure — the standing charge is essentially fixed infrastructure cost recovery, and Ofgem have consistently allowed DNOs to load more of their network costs onto it rather than unit rates.

On the boat I'm in a similar position. Barely drawing anything meaningful from the shore power hookup, yet the standing charge continues regardless.

Worth looking at whether you're actually on the right tariff for low-consumption users. Some suppliers (Octopus in particular) have experimented with zero standing charge options, though the unit rate trade-off needs careful scrutiny with a calculator before assuming it's better.

The maths genuinely differs depending on how many kWh you're pulling annually. If you're sub-500kWh from grid per year, the zero-standing-charge tariffs can sometimes work out favourably despite the higher pence-per-unit figure.

@CliffGazer is right that the structure is the core problem, but worth being precise about why it's increased specifically — Ofgem have allowed DNOs to recover more network reinforcement costs through standing charges rather than unit rates. Deliberate policy choice, not coincidence.

For those of us with substantial off-grid capacity (I run a 5.4kWh Fogstar lithium bank with Victron MPPT on the shepherd's hut, plus a separate motorhome setup), the maths gets perverse — you're subsidising grid upgrades you'll barely use.

One partial mitigation worth investigating: Octopus Agile or Intelligent Go standing charges aren't lower, but at least you can time any unavoidable grid draws to near-zero unit rates, which partially offsets the fixed cost psychologically and financially.

Complete grid disconnection is the only real escape, but the DNO disconnection admin alone makes that its own thread.