Anyone else noticed their energy bills actually gone up since going off-grid?

Bit of a weird one but yeah, I've actually noticed something similar despite spending most of my time in the motorhome now.

The issue for me is that I still have the house ticking over — can't quite bring myself to sell it yet — so I've got standing charges and minimum usage costs there, plus all the initial investment in the van's solar setup (Victron MPPT, Fogstar lithium batteries, the works) which I'm still effectively "paying back" mentally when I calculate real costs.

So on paper I've gone more off-grid, but my overall outgoings related to energy are arguably higher than before I started down this rabbit hole.

Anyone else found that the transition period is the expensive bit? I keep reading about people slashing their bills dramatically but I wonder if they're:

• Ignoring the capital costs of the equipment
• Already living fully off-grid with no property overheads
• Further down the line where everything's paid off

Would be curious whether people are doing proper like-for-like calculations or just looking at their electricity direct debits dropping and calling it a win.

I'm not complaining — I love the setup and the freedom is worth it — but I do think the "gone off-grid and saving a fortune" narrative is a bit more complicated than it gets presented sometimes.

What's everyone's actual experience been? Are you genuinely saving money when you factor everything in?

@MuddyMaker this is the standing charge trap that nobody warns you about.

You're essentially paying for two supplies — your house grid connection sitting idle with its daily standing charge (~60p/day with most suppliers) plus funding your off-grid setup. Until you either fully vacate the house or get it properly tenanted, you're haemorrhaging money on the grid side for almost nothing.

Seen this exact situation with my static caravan setup. Had the caravan pulling decent solar through a Victron MPPT whilst the house meter was ticking regardless.

Your options realistically:

• Tenant in the house covering bills
• Temporary supply disconnection (DNO will do it, usually £100-200)
• Accept it's a transition cost until circumstances change

The maths only starts favouring you properly once that standing charge disappears entirely.

@MuddyMaker classic situation honestly — I had almost exactly this when I first moved onto the narrowboat but kept the flat "just in case."

The thing that actually saved me was getting the house down to an absolute vampire-load minimum before I committed properly:

• Smart meter so you can see what's actually drawing when you're away
• Everything on switched sockets or smart plugs (Tasmota flashed ones are cheap)
• Fridge either emptied and switched off or replaced with a small efficient one

The standing charge is unavoidable unless you disconnect entirely, but slashing your consumption means the variable unit cost becomes almost negligible on top of it.

Have you actually audited what's drawing in the house while you're away? Boiler on frost protection, alarm panel, router, smoke alarms — it all adds up surprisingly fast and most of it can be eliminated or minimised without fully abandoning the property.

@MuddyMaker worth checking whether your grid supply actually needs to stay on full tariff. Some suppliers will let you drop to a deemed contract or even a temporary disconnection if the property is genuinely unoccupied most of the year — standing charge drops significantly.

Also look at whether you're keeping anything running at the house that's quietly burning units — immersion heaters on old timers, fridge left plugged in, that sort of thing. I found my garage freezer was costing me more than I'd realised before I wired it into my solar setup instead.

The other angle: if your motorhome system is genuinely surplus on good days (mine runs Victron kit with 600W of panels), exporting or at least offsetting a secondary location's load starts making sense rather than just leaving capacity wasted.

@Ozzy raises a good point about the tariff thing — I looked into this when I was splitting time between the van and the house.

What actually caught me out was the phantom loads in the house I'd completely forgotten about. Boiler on standby, ancient chest freezer in the garage, the router I left on "just in case." None of them individually alarming, but together they were silently munching through units every single day while I was parked up in a layby somewhere feeling smug about my 200Ah Fogstar battery.

Did a proper audit with a plug-in energy monitor — the kind that cost about a fiver from Amazon — and found nearly 180W of constant draw I'd basically sleepwalked into accepting years ago.

Sometimes going off-grid just illuminates how wasteful your other life was.