Anyone else noticed their energy bills still creeping up even after going mostly off-grid?

Spot on thread this. Even with my cabin setup running almost entirely on solar + a Victron Multiplus and a decent Fogstar lithium bank, I'm still seeing the standing charge alone eat into my quarterly bill more than I'd like.

The dirty secret of "going off-grid" in the UK is that most of us stay grid-tied for winter backup or just to avoid the hassle of DNO disconnection paperwork. So you're paying the standing charge regardless — currently sitting around 61p/day on most tariffs, which adds up to roughly £220/year before you've used a single unit.

A few things I've noticed that still push costs up even with minimal consumption:

• Phantom loads on anything left grid-fed (router, fridge, the odd socket you forget about)
• Export limitations — if you're not on a smart export tariff like Octopus Outgoing, you're generating and getting nothing back
• Winter shortfall top-ups — those few dark weeks in December/January where you're pulling from the grid more than you'd admit

The standing charge issue is the real killer. I've seen people argue you're better off just disconnecting entirely and eating the reconnection cost later, but that's a big gamble if your battery bank has a rough winter.

Curious whether anyone's actually gone full disconnect and regretted it, or found a tariff that makes staying connected genuinely worthwhile? The maths feels like it shifts depending on your location and how much backup you actually need.

@CrispyMender the standing charge is basically the grid's subscription fee for the privilege of occasionally borrowing a kettle's worth of electricity at 3am.

Genuinely though — my shepherd's hut and garden office are both fully off-grid now and the only thing keeping me tethered to the grid is the EV charger, which feels like paying a gym membership just to use the car park.

Seriously considering whether a second Fogstar bank and a beefy enough Victron inverter setup could handle overnight charging off solar surplus. The maths are getting closer every quarter precisely because the standing charge keeps nudging upward — at this rate the payback period practically shortens itself.

@CrispyMender the standing charge issue is the one that really grinds my gears. I'm running 800W of panels on my shepherd's hut with a 200Ah Fogstar Drift lithium bank and I still keep the grid connection purely as a backstop for November/December when UK irradiance is frankly laughable.

The maths that nobody wants to do: standing charge is currently around 61p/day with most suppliers, so roughly £220/year before you've used a single unit. At that point you have to ask whether a properly sized generator backup and full disconnection pencils out better.

For my usage it doesn't quite — the DNO disconnection paperwork alone is a headache — but if you're below about 3-4kWh/day average consumption, genuinely worth modelling it properly rather than just grumbling about it on here.

@CrispyMender this is exactly what pushed me toward thinking seriously about the boat as a permanent base. No grid connection means no standing charge — full stop. On the garden office I still maintain a connection for the kettle and occasional power tools, and that standing charge just sits there like a tax on existing.

What I've found is you have to think of it less as an energy cost and more as an insurance premium — are you paying for genuine peace of mind backup, or just habit?

For me the answer was habit. Slowly weaning off that connection entirely is the goal. The Victron kit handles the heavy lifting already, so the grid is basically just collecting rent for nothing.

Worth actually logging what you pull from the grid over a full quarter — the numbers might surprise you.

@CrispyMender the standing charge is the silent killer of off-grid economics that nobody talks about enough before they commit to a hybrid setup. I ran the numbers on mine last winter — roughly £85/quarter in standing charges for a grid connection I used perhaps four times, twice during a prolonged November overcast stretch when my 600Ah Fogstar bank finally bottomed out.

The genuine fix, if your planning situation allows it, is full disconnection. But that requires confidence in your storage capacity and backup generation. I added a small Honda generator as genuine emergency-only backup and that gave me the confidence to formally disconnect. The DNO process is actually straightforward — people assume it's bureaucratic nightmare but it really isn't.

@CallumHobbs the boat route is legitimately tempting purely on standing charge grounds alone.

@CrispyMender totally feel this. The standing charge is essentially a subscription fee for a service you're barely using, and the kicker is it keeps rising regardless of your consumption.

One thing worth looking into if you haven't already - some suppliers will let you switch to a genuinely low-usage tariff or even disconnect entirely if you can demonstrate your property meets the regs for a safe disconnection. Not straightforward, but people have done it.

@CallumHobbs the boat route is genuinely appealing for exactly this reason. No meter, no standing charge, just your system doing its thing.

For those still grid-tied though, at least the export payments via SEG can claw a little back. Not enough to cancel out the standing charge entirely but it softens the blow slightly.