Anyone else noticed their electricity bills have gone up again this month?

Just got my bill and I think my smart meter is having a laugh at my expense — up another £40 on last month and I've barely been home! 😤

Funny timing really, because I've just finished wiring up a second Fogstar Drift 100Ah into my static van setup and the smug satisfaction of watching my grid draw drop on the Victron app is the only thing keeping me sane right now.

Honestly though, the bills creeping up every quarter is exactly what pushed me down this rabbit hole in the first place — first it was the garden office running on solar, then the static, now I'm halfway through planning a proper EV charging setup off a battery bank because frankly paying peak rate to charge the car feels like a personal insult.

Anyone else finding the increases are accelerating faster than the payback calcs you did 18 months ago? Because mine are looking a bit optimistic now and I'm having to redo the spreadsheet again like some kind of masochistic accountant.

The one silver lining is every price hike basically fast-forwards the ROI on kit I've already bought — my Renogy panels have never looked so financially wise.

Would be curious whether anyone's on Octopus Flux or similar and actually managing to offset these rises meaningfully, or whether the arbitrage game is getting harder as everyone piles in. Drop your tariff and setup below, genuinely trying to work out next steps before the next price cap review absolutely ruins my weekend mood. 📊

@BorderVanLifer Ha, classic timing — you're halfway through escaping the grid and they hit you with that! 😄

Worth checking if your standing charge has crept up separately from the unit rate — both have been quietly climbing and people often only notice the headline figure. On my boat I'm still grid-tied for winter top-ups via a Victron MultiPlus, and even that minimal usage stings now the standing charge alone is nearly 60p/day.

What's the second system you're wiring up? If it's battery storage you might want to look at Fogstar's Drift cells — decent $/kWh and genuinely good UK support. Once you're properly self-sufficient the bill shock becomes a distant memory pretty quickly, even accounting for the upfront kit costs.

Hey @BorderVanLifer, gutting isn't it! Don't let it knock your motivation though — if anything, use that bill as fuel (pun intended 😄).

One thing worth doing before you fully cut over is taking manual meter readings every day for a week or two. Smart meters can sometimes report oddly during the transition period, especially if there's any back-feed confusion going on. I had similar grief when I was commissioning my setup up here in the Lakes — turned out my supplier had estimated one month and then overcorrected the next.

Also worth ringing them and asking for a breakdown — you're entitled to it. Sometimes there's a standing charge increase buried in there that's nothing to do with actual usage.

Hang tight, sounds like you're nearly there! What system are you putting in, if you don't mind sharing? 🙂

@BorderVanLifer that £40 jump is almost poetic really — the grid's farewell gift as you're halfway out the door.

My static caravan setup started exactly like that. One bad bill, one moment of stubbornness, and suddenly I'm deep in Victron documentation at midnight.

Worth knowing: once you're fully off-grid, those Ofgem price cap announcements become background noise. They just stop mattering. There's something quietly satisfying about watching the news cycle through another energy crisis and feeling genuinely indifferent to it.

The upfront cost stings, but the psychology of a £0 electricity bill changes you in ways that are difficult to articulate until you've experienced it.

Finish that wiring.

@BorderVanLifer smart meters "estimate" far more than they let on — worth checking the actual read against what they've billed you. Had a similar spike on my boat setup last winter and it turned out to be a dodgy meter reading rather than genuine usage.

Also, what's the second system you're wiring up? If it's grid-tied you'll want to be careful — DNO notification requirements are a pain but skipping them can void your insurance. Ask me how I know 😅

The £40 honestly wouldn't surprise me regardless — standing charges alone are robbery now. My whole motivation for going further off-grid was watching those fixed costs climb whether I used anything or not. At least when your solar array isn't producing, you're not paying someone just for the privilege of being connected.

@ExBrickie makes a fair point on the meter reads — worth doing.

@BorderVanLifer once your secondary system's up and running you'll start seeing which loads actually hurt you. That was the eye-opener for me when I sorted my van build. Monitored everything through a Victron BMV and realised the fridge was doing the most damage back at the house too.

If you haven't already, grab a plug-in energy monitor (Owl or similar, dead cheap) and run it on your main culprits for a week. Kettle, fridge, anything on standby. The numbers are usually worse than you'd expect.

At least the timing works in your favour — nothing like a punishing bill to sharpen your focus on getting the off-grid side finished properly.