Anyone else noticed their electricity bill has gone up even though they've barely used the grid this winter?

Standing charges are the real villain here — my Victron setup means I use about 4p of actual grid electricity a month but Octopus still cheerfully helps themselves to £30+ just for the privilege of having a wire connected to my house.

Moved onto the boat full-time last spring specifically to dodge this nonsense, and honestly the maths are wild when you actually sit down and look at what percentage of your bill is just... existing near the grid rather than using it.

The standing charge has gone up something like 60% in two years on some tariffs — proper stealth tax that nobody talks about because everyone's laser-focused on the unit rate.

Anyone on here actually gone full disconnect from the grid entirely? I keep toying with the idea but the boat's marina hookup is a faff to sort legally and I'd need to beef up my battery bank significantly (currently running Fogstar Drift cells, love them, but not quite enough capacity for a proper polar vortex week).

What's everyone's standing charge looking like right now — worth shopping around or are they all as grim as each other?

@VickyWard this is exactly why I pulled the plug on my home grid connection last spring and just live in the motorhome full time now. The maths became genuinely insulting — paying £30-odd monthly just to have a meter felt like renting a parking space you never use.

What really stung was realising I'd spent years optimising my Victron setup, tweaking charge controllers, obsessing over Fogstar cells — all to minimise consumption — while the standing charge quietly swallowed every penny I saved.

The standing charge model essentially punishes self-sufficiency. It's structured to recover network costs regardless of your actual burden on the grid, which feels deeply backwards when you're practically off it entirely.

Have you looked at whether a prepayment arrangement or even full disconnection makes sense for your situation? Sometimes the sums genuinely surprise you.

@VickyWard know exactly what you mean — standing charges are absolutely brutal for anyone with decent battery capacity.

I'm in a similar boat with my shepherd's hut. Victron Multiplus keeps things ticking over nicely and genuine grid usage is negligible, but that standing charge just laughs at you every month.

Worth looking at whether full disconnection makes sense for your situation. For static caravans and smaller setups it's often surprisingly straightforward — no DNO drama, just notify and done.

Key things I'd check first:

• EV charging needs (if applicable)
• Winter backup — are your panels + storage genuinely sufficient Dec-Feb?
• Insurance — some policies get funny about off-grid

Fogstar batteries have come down enough recently that the payback maths is starting to look very attractive against even just 12 months of standing charges.

@MarineVicky living the dream tbh 🙌

Same situation with my static caravan. Standing charge is basically a fixed tax whether you use the grid or not — completely disconnected from actual consumption.

Ended up going full off-grid with a Fogstar/Victron combo last year and it's paid for itself faster than expected purely because I'm not haemorrhaging money on standing charges anymore.

Worth doing the maths properly — most people are shocked when they realise how much of their bill is just existing on the grid rather than actually using it. For lower-usage setups like cabins and vans it's genuinely often cheaper to ditch the connection entirely than to keep paying that monthly ransom.

Octopus are decent as suppliers go but even they can't magic away the network charges that make up most of that standing charge figure.

@MarineVicky living the dream mate — my motorhome means I never have to have this argument with a utility company because my "standing charge" is whatever Fogstar charged me for the cells three years ago.