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

Same experience here with my static. Even though I pull maybe 2-3 units a month from the grid now (just running the immersion occasionally as backup), the standing charge alone is eye-watering. I'm on Octopus and it's crept up to around 61p/day just to be connected. That's £220-odd a year for the privilege of barely using the thing.

The real kicker is that the standing charge has risen faster than the unit rate in recent years, which completely inverts the logic of going off-grid. Your reward for reducing consumption is... a higher effective cost-per-unit on the tiny amount you do use.

I've been seriously weighing up whether to disconnect entirely. My Victron Multiplus-II handles the heavy lifting, Fogstar batteries are holding up well after 18 months, and I've got enough solar capacity that grid dependency is basically psychological at this point rather than practical.

The counterargument I keep coming back to is grid export — if you're on something like SEG (Smart Export Guarantee), staying connected at least partially offsets the standing charge. Though the rates being offered are pretty laughable compared to what you're paying to import.

Has anyone here actually gone fully off-grid and cut the DNO connection entirely? Curious whether the disconnection/reconnection cost makes it a false economy if you ever need to hook back up. That's the thing stopping me from pulling the trigger — the reinstatement charges can be substantial depending on your DNO region.

Would be interested to know what others are paying in standing charges and whether the maths is starting to tip toward full disconnection.

@MandyRoss yeah the standing charge is the killer isn't it. I'm in the same boat with my garden office setup — barely touch the grid but still paying ~£1/day just to have the connection.

Looked into ditching it entirely but the DNO disconnection process is a faff and you lose the option to export if you ever add capacity later.

Might be worth checking if your supplier offers a low user tariff — some still exist though they're getting rarer. Or look at whether a prepayment meter makes sense purely for the standing charge rate difference.

Honestly at 2-3 units a month you're basically paying for insurance you don't use.

@MandyRoss @BerlingoSolar — worth running the actual numbers on this before assuming grid connection is worth keeping.

On my narrowboat I disconnected entirely two years ago. Standing charges in some areas are pushing 60-65p/day now, which is £220+ annually before you've used a single unit. If you're only pulling 2-3 kWh monthly, your effective cost-per-kWh is absolutely staggering once you factor that in.

The question is whether your backup use case (immersion in your case, Mandy) actually justifies that. An immersion diverter like the iBoost or Marlec equivalent paired with a decent battery bank might eliminate that final grid dependency entirely.

I appreciate it's not straightforward — DNOs can be awkward about reconnection if you disconnect and later change your mind. Worth checking your supply contract terms first. But the maths often surprises people when they actually do it properly.

@FenlandSolar makes a fair point about running the numbers properly. I did exactly that last year and the maths genuinely surprised me. My standing charge was costing me around £300 a year for the privilege of using maybe £40 worth of actual electricity. Once I factored in a decent battery buffer and a small propane backup for the really grim February weeks, ditching the connection entirely made sense for my situation.

That said, it's not a one-size-fits-all decision — depends massively on your location, what loads you genuinely can't cover off-grid, and whether you're on a meter that allows easy disconnection. Some folks on parks and statics also have clauses in their agreements about maintaining grid connection, so worth checking that first @MandyRoss before making any decisions.

@FenlandSolar @DazBarker93 — worth factoring in what your grid connection actually enables though. On the boat I keep a grid hookup at the marina partly for the EV charging fallback when solar's been poor for a week, but I've seriously considered dropping it and just sizing the battery bank properly instead.

The breakeven calculation changes completely once you account for Fogstar or similar LFP prices now vs even 18 months ago. Battery storage has got cheap enough that the standing charge math is starting to look genuinely daft for anyone with a modest setup.

My van conversion runs entirely standalone and I've never missed having a grid connection there. If I were static-based like @MandyRoss I'd probably just keep a very small grid contract as genuine emergency fallback and accept the standing charge as insurance money rather than energy cost.