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Standing charges bill every day the meter exists, use or no use: they hit low users hardest (the empty holiday home pays them in full). When comparing tariffs, low-usage households should weight the standing charge heavily and high-usage households the unit rate: the cheapest tariff depends on which side of average you sit. Some suppliers offer low/no standing charge tariffs with higher unit rates: run YOUR kWh through both.
What The Standing Charge Calculator Works Out
- Standing charges per year: the electricity and gas daily charges added together, multiplied by 365 and converted to pounds. At recent price-cap levels of 50p to 70p a day for electricity and about 30p for gas, that is GBP 300-plus a year owed before a single unit flows.
- Share of your bill: the annual standing charges as a percentage of your total energy bill. It dominates the bills of low users, the frugal single occupant, the well-insulated flat and the holiday home paying full freight for an empty meter.
- Per month, before any usage: the yearly figure divided by 12. "I switched everything off and the bill barely moved" is usually a standing-charge discovery in progress.
- Annual electricity and gas use (advanced): your kWh from the annual statement. Ofgem's typical household uses about 2,700 kWh of electricity and 11,500 kWh of gas a year.
- Standing charge per unit used (advanced): the standing charges spread over every kWh you buy, showing the effective uplift on your unit price. A low user can be paying 15p to 20p per kWh in standing charges alone.
- Alternative tariff (advanced): enter the standing charge and unit rate of a low or no standing charge tariff and your current unit rate (defaulting to the Ofgem cap). The card prices a year of electricity on both so you can see which structure suits your usage, not a mythical average household.
- Break-even usage (advanced): the annual kWh at which the two tariffs cost the same: the standing charge saving per year divided by the unit rate difference. Low users belong on low standing charge tariffs even at premium unit rates; high users the reverse.
- Capping off an unused gas supply (advanced): a disused gas supply bills its standing charge daily until the connection is formally capped. The card shows the yearly saving and how many months a capping fee (typically GBP 50 to GBP 150) takes to repay in an all-electric home or an empty second home.
- What the charge covers: network maintenance, metering, supplier-failure levies and policy costs, varying by distribution region (northern and Merseyside electricity famously dearer). Ofgem's periodic consultations on shifting costs between standing charges and unit rates keep it moving, so check at each cap announcement rather than assume.
Price cap details: Ofgem.