Anyone else noticed their electricity bill has gone up even though they're mostly off-grid now?

Noticed the same thing creeping in over the past couple of billing periods. Worth breaking down what's actually happening here because there are a few separate issues at play.

The standing charge is the obvious culprit for most people. Even if you're drawing near-zero kWh from the grid, that daily standing charge keeps ticking — currently around 60p/day on most tariffs, which adds up to roughly £220/year for essentially nothing. Ofgem have been quietly allowing suppliers to load more fixed costs onto the standing charge rather than the unit rate, which disproportionately hammers low-consumption households like ours.

Second thing I'd check is reactive power and whether your inverter setup is causing any measurement quirks with your smart meter. My Victron Multiplus-II caused some odd readings early on before I got the grid-tie configuration sorted properly.

Also worth looking at your battery charging habits — if you're topping up from the grid during shoulder periods rather than peak solar, those units are still being counted. I use a time-of-use tariff (Octopus Go) specifically to keep that cost predictable.

The frustrating reality is that the grid infrastructure cost model wasn't designed for prosumers or low-consumption off-gridders. We still benefit from the grid as a backup, so some contribution is arguably fair — but the current structure feels punitive.

Anyone found a tariff that genuinely works better for minimal grid usage? Interested to hear what others are running, particularly if you're sub-200 kWh/year from the grid.

@Bazza60 this is the one that really stings when you're barely drawing anything from the grid.

On the narrowboat we spend most of the summer on solar and the inverter barely touches the grid connection at the marina berth — but that standing charge keeps ticking regardless. Currently sitting around 61p/day on Octopus, which works out to roughly £220 a year just for the privilege of having the connection.

The cruel irony is that the less you use, the worse value it becomes as a proportion of your bill. Our actual unit consumption is sometimes under £5 a month, yet the standing charge dwarfs it completely.

Some people suggest cutting the grid entirely but honestly — having that backup during a grey November week has saved us more than once. It's essentially an insurance premium at this point.

@DerekDixon living on a narrowboat you'll feel this more than most — the standing charge is essentially a subscription fee for a service you're barely using.

Mine's sitting at around 61p/day now which sounds trivial until you realise that's £222/year before I've pulled a single watt from the grid. My Victron setup means I'm genuinely grid-independent most of the year, so that standing charge feels like paying a gym membership to walk past the window.

What really got me was realising you can't escape it — going fully off-grid and cutting the connection entirely costs thousands in disconnection and potential reconnection fees later. So most of us just... pay it.

The game becomes making that standing charge work harder — emergency backup, EV charging on cheap overnight Octopus tariff rates, that sort of thing.

@Bazza60 @DerekDixon spot on about the standing charge. Spent three weeks last summer barely touching the grid — solar doing its thing, Victron humming away happily — then opened the bill and nearly fell off the tiller. Paid roughly £28 just for the privilege of having a wire attached to the boat. Didn't

@Bazza60 @PanelSteve worth noting that the standing charge situation has actually worsened for low-consumption grid-tied users over the past few years as suppliers have shifted more network cost recovery onto the fixed element rather than unit rates. The practical consequence is that your per-kWh cost becomes almost irrelevant when you're pulling maybe 1-2 units a day — the standing charge dominates the bill entirely.

On both my van conversion and the boat I've moved toward treating grid connection as a genuine last resort rather than routine backup. Running Victron MultiPlus with Fogstar lithium gives enough depth of reserve that grid draw is genuinely rare. At that point you're essentially paying a standing charge for emergency insurance.

The question worth asking is whether retaining grid connection is actually economical versus alternatives like a small petrol generator for genuine emergencies.