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

Same here — bill went up despite barely touching the grid between October and January.

The culprit for me is almost entirely the standing charge. Octopus bumped it again and I'm now paying over 60p/day just to be connected. My actual unit consumption from the grid was minimal (garden office runs off the array, and I've been top-up charging the EV on excess solar where possible), yet the bill still crept up.

It's starting to feel like the standing charge is propping up grid infrastructure costs that should arguably be funded differently — essentially penalising people who've invested in their own generation. Bit rich really.

I've genuinely started questioning whether full grid disconnection makes more financial sense long-term. The maths isn't quite there yet for my setup — I need that winter grid top-up — but with Fogstar battery prices dropping and my Victron system already paid off, it's getting closer every year.

Curious whether anyone here has actually run the numbers on going fully off-grid vs staying connected just for the standing charge insurance? And has anyone switched to a supplier that handles low-usage customers better, or is it pretty much the same across the board now?

@ExJoiner9 standing charges are the grid's subscription fee for a service you're barely using — Netflix at least has the decency to let you cancel.

Seriously though, this is exactly why I ditched the landside hook-up on the narrowboat years ago. The standing charge was going up faster than my Victron BMV's SOC on a sunny day. At some point the maths just tips and you're essentially paying £200+ a year for the privilege of occasionally boiling a kettle from the grid.

Worth actually running the numbers — if your actual consumption from the grid is minimal, that standing charge as a cost-per-kWh-used will be absolutely eye-watering. Some people find going fully off-grid and just cancelling the contract altogether makes more sense than keeping that parasitic monthly drain.

@ExJoiner9 exactly the same situation here with the motorhome setup — I keep a grid connection purely as a backup for extended bad-weather periods when solar yield collapses, and the standing charge has become almost comically disproportionate to actual consumption.

Worth doing the maths properly: at ~61p/day that's roughly £222/year before you've imported a single kWh. For many of us, that's covering maybe 4-6 weeks of genuine grid dependency annually, so the effective "emergency electricity" rate per unit is absolutely eye-watering once you factor it in.

I've been seriously considering whether a larger LiFePO4 bank (currently running Fogstar Drift 200Ah) plus an additional panel or two would make full disconnection viable year-round. The standing charge saving alone starts to offset capex surprisingly quickly when you model it out over 5 years.

Has anyone here actually gone fully off-grid domestically and cut the connection entirely?

@ExJoiner9 yeah this is exactly why I nearly cut the cord completely last year. Standing charge on mine crept up to similar numbers and I thought — what am I actually paying for?

Ended up doing the maths and my grid connection was costing me more annually than a decent battery upgrade would. Went with a second Fogstar battery instead and haven't looked back.

Still kept the connection though, mainly because the cabin occasionally needs a boost in a really grim week of cloud cover in January. But I'm seriously weighing up whether that insurance policy is worth 60p+ a day just sitting there.

Anyone actually gone fully off-grid and ditched the connection entirely? Curious what the DNO process was like.

@ExJoiner9 worth looking at whether you can actually justify keeping the connection at all. I went through the maths on my static caravan setup last winter — standing charge alone was costing me more annually than the grid power I actually pulled. Ended up sizing the Victron/Fogstar bank properly and cutting the cord entirely for the van, though I kept a connection at the main cabin because of EV charging requirements in winter when solar's weak and I can't quite bridge the gap reliably yet.

The EV situation is what keeps me tethered honestly — 7kW AC charging overnight when there's nothing in the batteries is the one scenario I can't easily solve off-grid without a much larger generator than I want to run.

If you're not charging a vehicle though, the numbers might actually stack up for full disconnection depending on your load profile.