Anyone else noticed their energy bills have gone up even after going mostly off-grid?

Yeah, weirdly this happened to us too last winter. You'd think cutting the grid down to almost nothing would mean the bills just... disappear. But nope. 😅

A few things I reckon are going on:

• Standing charges — absolute daylight robbery. You pay them regardless of how much you actually pull from the grid. Ours is nearly 60p/day now which adds up shockingly fast
• Occasional top-ups — those dark cloudy weeks in November/December when the Victron is giving you the side-eye and you reluctantly pull from the grid... at peak rates, ouch
• Phantom loads — I found the garden office was bleeding current overnight through an old extension lead setup. Nothing dramatic but enough to notice

The standing charge thing is honestly the most frustrating bit. We're paying roughly £200/year just to have the connection, even if we barely touch it. Makes you wonder whether full off-grid is actually worth it financially at some point.

Anyone looked into actually disconnecting entirely? I've been tempted but the DNO process sounds like a nightmare and I worry about resale value on the house.

Also curious whether anyone's switched to one of the cheaper tariffs specifically for minimal usage — heard Octopus have something that might suit but haven't dug into it properly yet.

What's everyone else seeing on their bills? Is it purely the standing charge stinging you or something else going on?

@LK_Solar worth checking your standing charge — it's the part of the bill that never goes away regardless of usage. EDF, Octopus, whoever you're with, they all charge roughly 50-60p/day just to stay connected. That's £180-220/year before you've drawn a single unit.

For my shepherd's hut setup I eventually crunched the numbers and realised the standing charge alone was costing more than my actual consumption. Ended up going fully isolated with a Victron MultiPlus and Fogstar Drift LiFePO4 bank — the disconnection admin was faff but the standing charge savings justified it within 18 months.

If full disconnection isn't practical, some suppliers offer low-usage tariffs that reduce standing charges for minimal grid dependency. Worth ringing around.

@LK_Solar this hit close to home when I first set up my shepherd's hut last year. Even with the Victron system running pretty much everything, I was still getting quarterly bills that made me do a double-take.

Turned out a big chunk was exactly what @HighlandExplorer flagged — but beyond that, I'd completely forgotten about a small immersion heater I'd left plumbed into the mains "just in case." That little relic was quietly costing me every time the weather turned.

Worth going through every single grid-connected appliance with a fine tooth comb. Sometimes the culprit is something embarrassingly obvious that you've just stopped noticing. A basic plug-in energy monitor — nothing fancy, a tenner off Amazon — sitting on your consumer unit for a week will tell you exactly what's still drawing from the grid when you're not watching.

Same thing happened with my static caravan setup. Even months where I pulled basically nothing from the grid, the bill was still £30-odd just sitting there doing nothing useful.

What's actually annoying me right now — does anyone know if you can negotiate the standing charge with your supplier, or request a different tariff structure if you're genuinely low-usage? Like, is there a specific tariff designed for people who are mostly off-grid but still want that backup connection?

Also curious whether it's worth going through a third party broker or just ringing the supplier direct. I've seen some folk mention Octopus having something flexible but not sure if that applies to non-domestic connections like a static caravan plot.

@HighlandExplorer did you actually manage to reduce yours or just accept it as the cost of keeping the backup?

@LK_Solar great thread. One thing nobody's mentioned yet — check whether you're on the right tariff for your situation. Most suppliers have you on a standard domestic tariff by default, which often isn't optimised for very low consumption. Some actually penalise low users proportionally because the unit rate assumes a certain baseline.

Also worth looking at whether you've got any "phantom" loads still connected to the grid side — things like an old immersion heater, a freezer in the garage, or even a broadband router that's hardwired to mains rather than your off-grid supply. Easy to forget about them entirely until the bill arrives.

@HighlandExplorer makes a solid point about standing charges — they've crept up significantly over the past couple of years regardless of what you're actually drawing. Sometimes switching to a lower standing charge tariff with a higher unit rate makes more sense at our usage levels.

@Ben1960 makes a cracking point about tariffs — I spent an embarrassing six months on a standard variable rate while my Victron system was doing the heavy lifting beautifully. Completely wasted.

The thing that really stung me though: standing charges. Even when my shepherd's hut setup meant I was drawing a genuinely heroic 0 kWh from the grid for three consecutive months, Octopus still cheerfully invoiced me for the standing charge alone. Which is, depending on your supplier, somewhere between 50p and 61p per day just for the privilege of being connected.

If your usage is low enough, you might want to seriously investigate whether full disconnection is economically viable — obviously that's a bigger conversation involving your DNO and your emergency backup strategy, but the maths can surprise you.