Energy bills

Why a home with everything switched off still pays £200 a year for electricity

Switch off every light, the fridge and the router, then leave for a year. The meter never moves, and the bill still comes to about £200. Follow that £200 to what it pays for, see who would pay if it were scrapped, then work out your own.

Frugalab · About 9 minutes · Great Britain, prices for 1 October to 31 December 2026, checked 11 October 2026
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1 · A year with everything off

Switch off everything in your home: the lights, the fridge, the router, every charger. Leave it like that for a whole year. The meter doesn't move.

Not a single unit used all year. What does the electricity bill say?

The bill comes to £200.13, and not a single light went on. What are you paying for when nothing is coming down the wire?

2 · 55p a day

Every day your home stays connected adds a standing charge. From October to December 2026 the average in Great Britain is 54.83p a day, paying by Direct Debit. That's without VAT, which is off electricity bills from October 2026 to March 2027.

One coin for every day of the year: 54.83p × 365 days = £200.13.

A typical home uses 2,500 units of electricity a year. At 26.32p a unit that's £658, plus the £200: a whole bill of about £858.

The standing charge is nearly a quarter of that bill (£200 ÷ £858 = 23%), paid before a single light goes on.

3 · One bill, two prices

The first price is the unit rate, 26.32p on average. A unit is a kilowatt-hour: the energy a 1,000-watt appliance uses in an hour. Boiling a full kettle uses about a tenth of one. Use more units, pay more.

The second is the standing charge: a fixed amount for every day your home stays connected, whatever you use. The unit rate charges you for using electricity. The standing charge charges you for having it available.

your turn

4 · What the 55p pays for

Ofgem, the energy regulator, says standing charges recover fixed costs. First, the cables and wires that bring power to your door.

Then government schemes, such as the Warm Home Discount: a bill rebate for some low-income households.

And your supplier's cost of running your account.

None of these shrink when you use less. The cable to your house still needs maintaining, faults still need fixing after a storm, and your account still needs managing.

5 · Why it gets a line of its own

When electricity was privatised under the Electricity Act 1989, selling it was separated from carrying it. Selling became a competitive market, which is why you can switch supplier.

Carrying didn't, because nobody wants five companies digging up the same street to lay five sets of cables. Local networks stayed regional monopolies, with their prices regulated.

Your supplier collects the network's costs from you and passes them on. You can change who sells you electricity, but not the cable. Network costs vary around the country, so your standing charge depends partly on where you live.

6 · Why not scrap it?

Scrapping the charge wouldn't make the cost go away. To collect the same £200 through the unit price, share it across the 2,500 units a typical home uses in a year: £200 ÷ 2,500 = 8p a unit.

Every unit would cost about 8p more: 34.32p instead of 26.32p.

A one-person flat using 1,000 units a year pays £463 today (1,000 × 26.32p + £200). With no standing charge it's £343 (1,000 × 34.32p): about £120 less.

A large family or an electrically heated home using 5,000 units goes from £1,516 to £1,716: about £200 more. The cost moves from light users to heavy ones.

your turn

A real reform would be priced on actual national usage rather than this neat average, but the direction holds.

Ofgem looked at doing roughly this and decided not to force it on everyone. Households with high use they can't avoid, such as people who rely on medical equipment like ventilators or home dialysis, risked significant losses. The question isn't whether to pay for the network. It's who pays.

7 · The catch in "low standing charge" tariffs

Ofgem's alternative was a trial. As of July 2026, EDF, E.ON and Octopus offered tariffs with lower standing charges, typically £150 a year less for gas and electricity together. They sit outside the price cap, so their unit rates go up: E.ON's adds around 3.5p a unit.

MoneySavingExpert's analysis suggests they generally only save money if you use under about 1,800 units of electricity and 7,500 of gas a year. A typical home uses 2,500 and 9,500. No standing charge isn't automatically cheaper: it collects the same money a different way.

A dark, empty house still gets a bill: about £200 a year.

It isn't for electricity you used. It's a share of keeping the wire there, maintained and connected, ready for when you switch the lights back on.

Before you switch tariffs: price the whole year

Don't judge a tariff by its standing charge alone. The only comparison that counts is the whole year: (daily standing charge × 365) + (unit rate × the units you use in a year).

1

Find your own two prices

Your daily standing charge and unit rate are on your bill or in your supplier's app. They depend on where you live and how you pay, and the price cap changes them every three months.

2

Find your units for a year

Your annual usage is on your bill or in the app, in kWh. A typical home uses about 2,500 units of electricity a year.

3

Price both tariffs on your units

A low-standing-charge tariff sits outside the price cap and has a higher unit rate. If you use very little it may win; if you're typical or above, it usually won't. On a gas and electricity deal, price the gas too.

Work out your own standing charge

Put in the two prices from your bill and the units you use in a year. See what being connected costs you, its share of your bill, and what your year would cost if the charge were moved onto the unit price.

Your prices
Your usage

your standing charge, over a year

£200a year

Units you use
Standing charge
Whole year

Assumptions: electricity only, the standing charge for all 365 days, one unit rate all year (no day and night rates). "Moved onto the unit price" is an illustration, as in the story: your year's standing charge shared across a typical home's 2,500 units. A real reform would be priced on national usage. Prices you put in should include VAT if your bill does; the averages here are without it. Education, not financial advice.

The video

Watch it in four minutes

The same story, drawn: the year away, a coin for every day, the wire under the street, and the seesaw of who pays if the charge goes. Good for sending to anyone who's just opened their first bill.

Sources and calculation notes

How the numbers on this page are made. One model drives every drawing, readout and sentence. A year's standing charge: 54.83p × 365 = £200.13. The typical bill: 2,500 × 26.32p + £200.13 = £858.13, of which the standing charge is 23%. Scrapping it: £200.13 ÷ 2,500 = 8.0p a unit, so 26.32p becomes 34.32p. 1,000 units: £463.33 today against £343.25 (£120.08 less). 5,000 units: £1,516.13 against £1,716.26 (£200.13 more). The 8p is set on a typical home rather than on actual national usage, a simplification. Northern Ireland has a separate market and regulator and isn't covered.