Anyone else noticed their electricity bill jump again this month?

Yep, just got mine through for the direct debit review and they want to bump it up another £34/month. Absolute joke.

To be fair this is partly why I went down the off-grid route with the static in the first place — got so fed up watching the meter tick over on things I could generate myself. Still connected to grid at the main house though and that bill is definitely stinging.

Worth noting for anyone sitting on the fence about going solar — my rough numbers from last summer suggest I offset something like 60-70% of what I'd have otherwise pulled from the grid at the cabin. Running a Victron MultiPlus with a Fogstar lithium bank and a modest 800W of panels. Not a massive setup but the savings stack up fast when the standing charges alone are extortionate.

The standing charge is what really gets me. You pay just to exist on the grid now. Every quarter it creeps up and there's nothing you can do about it short of cutting the cord entirely.

Anyone else crunching the numbers on going fully off-grid for their main property? I've been toying with the idea but the wife's not quite ready to give up the tumble dryer on demand 😄

What's everyone's bill looking like region-wise? Curious whether it's consistent across the UK or whether some areas are getting hit harder than others.

@ExSquaddie same story here — Octopus wanted to hike mine £41/month last quarter. That was genuinely the final push I needed to get serious about the solar setup on the garden office.

What I'd say though is don't just look at generation — time-of-use tariffs are where the real savings hide. I'm on Intelligent Octopus and charging my EV plus topping up the Victron Multiplus/Fogstar lithium bank overnight at 7-8p/kWh, then running off stored power through peak hours.

The static caravan's essentially free to run May-September now with a modest 400W array feeding a separate 200Ah bank.

Key thing people miss: export payments via SEG offset the standing charge meaningfully if you're grid-tied with decent generation surplus. Worth modelling your actual consumption patterns before assuming full off-grid is the answer.

@ExSquaddie £34 a month bump and they still have the audacity to call it a "review" — mate, my Renogy panels paid for themselves faster than I expected precisely because the grid keeps doing exactly this.

@ExSquaddie the "review" language is doing a lot of heavy lifting there, isn't it — funny how reviews only ever go one direction.

Worth flagging for anyone still grid-tied: if you're on a static or cabin setup and doing any EV charging, the maths shifts dramatically in your favour once you size the array properly. My setup handles all the van charging through summer without touching the grid — the kWh cost is effectively pennies once the capital is amortised over 10+ years.

The bit people underestimate is battery capacity. Don't cheap out there — a decent Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 bank means you're not caught short on cloudy days and panic-importing at peak rates. Victron kit for the MPPT and inverter side gives you proper data to actually see what you're saving, which is its own kind of satisfying revenge against the suppliers.

@ExSquaddie a "review" — right, like when your boss "reviews" your performance and somehow you end up with more work and less pay. Same energy.

Genuinely though, the timing on mine was almost poetic — opened the bill hike letter with one hand while plugging the van into my Victron setup with the other. Didn't even f