Standing Charge For Electric

When you receive your energy bill, it can be difficult to understand all the different parts. Most people focus on the unit rate – the price you pay per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity and gas you use. However, there's another crucial component: the standing charge for electric and gas. This daily fee is a fixed cost on your bill, and understanding how standing charges work is essential for anyone looking to control their energy spending in the UK energy market.

Understanding the Standing Charge for Electric and Gas in the UK

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What Costs Are Included in the Standing Charge?

It’s a common question: what are you actually paying for? The costs included in your standing charge are not just profit for your supplier. They cover the essential, fixed costs of maintaining the entire energy supply network, including:

What Are Standing Charges? A Clear Definition

Standing charges are a fixed daily amount that your energy supplier adds to your bill for your energy connection. Think of it as a line rental for the energy network. This daily standing charge applies to both electricity standing charges and gas standing charges, and you have to pay it every single day, even if it's an empty property where you use no energy at all.

Standing Charges and the Energy Price Cap

For most households, the energy price cap (or price cap) set by Ofgem limits what suppliers can charge for both the unit rate and the daily standing charge. This applies to most standard energy tariffs, though not all. Some standing charge tariffs might offer a lower standing charge but compensate with higher unit rates, a model sometimes seen with a prepayment meter. It's always worth checking the details of your tariff.

• Operating and maintaining the grid wires and gas pipes.

• The cost of reading your meter readings.

• Costs passed on from failed suppliers.

• Contributions to government support schemes and environmental initiatives.

"You can’t get rid of the standing charge so we attacked the variable cost instead. By using a battery to store the cheapest energy you can reduce your grid usage to near zero, so the standing charge is a small, known item on a much smaller bill"

Peter Marshall
Technical Founder
Volta Eco Systems

The Best Way to Lower Your Overall Energy Bill

The key to unlocking significant savings lies in smart technology that works for you. A Volta Eco battery system puts complete control of your home's energy directly into your hands through our intuitive smartphone app. This isn't just a simple monitoring tool; it's a powerful energy management brain that makes reducing your electric bill effortless.

Here’s how the ECOS app works to lower your costs:

• It Automates Savings: The app uses AI to learn your energy habits, check weather forecasts, and monitor the grid for the lowest electricity prices. It then automatically charges your battery with the cheapest power available so you don't have to.

• It Provides Real-Time Insight: You can watch your home’s energy flow minute-by-minute, seeing exactly how much power you’re generating from solar, using from your battery, or drawing from the grid right on your phone.

• It Manages Your Whole Home: Seamlessly control other smart devices like your EV charger or heat pump directly from the app, optimising their usage for peak efficiency and maximum cost savings.

By putting this level of intelligent control at your fingertips, the standing charge on your bill becomes a minor detail, because you’ve taken command of all the variable costs that truly drive your spending.

Making the Standing Charge Insignificant with Volta Eco

The standing charge is a fixed daily cost you can't avoid. At Volta Eco Systems, we provide the technology to make that fixed cost feel insignificant. We empower you to take control of the variable part of your bill, leading to real savings and energy independence.

Certified Quality & Safety: Our products feature advanced LFP battery cells from CATL, the world's leading battery manufacturer. We hold top safety ratings, including UL9540A, and are recognised as Tier 1 by Bloomberg—a standard achieved by only 2% of global manufacturers.

Leading Products: We provide the PowerPod for residential homes and the PowerCore for commercial and industrial applications. Both systems are specifically engineered to deliver performance and savings in the UK market.

Significant Savings, All Year Round: By using our systems to avoid expensive peak-rate electricity, you can cut your variable energy spending by up to 70%. This strategy makes the daily standing charge a predictable, minor part of a much smaller total bill.

Modular & Scalable Systems: Designed for easy integration and expansion, our systems offer modular scalability to grow with your energy needs.

Intelligent Energy Management: Our smart operating systems (ECOS for homes, Pangu OS for businesses) are the brains behind the savings. They automatically store the cheapest available energy and deploy it to avoid expensive peak-rate power, which is the key to lowering your variable costs.

While you can't control the standing charge, you can control everything else. We provide end-to-end support to ensure your system delivers maximum savings. Choose Volta Eco Systems to make your energy bills predictable, manageable, and affordable.

Tailored Solutions for Every Energy Need

Volta Eco Systems provides market-leading battery storage solutions for both residential and commercial applications. Both the PowerPod and PowerCore are engineered for performance, safety, and long-term savings.

For Your Home: The PowerPod

The PowerPod is the ultimate all-in-one energy storage system for homeowners. It is designed to be powerful, safe, and seamlessly integrated into your daily life.

• Powerful & Scalable: A single PowerPod unit can provide up to 19.9kWh of storage and can be expanded by connecting up to five units in parallel for complete energy independence.

• Uninterrupted Power: In the event of a power cut, the PowerPod switches to backup power in less than 10 milliseconds, ensuring your lights and appliances stay on without interruption.

• Advanced Safety: The PowerPod features a four-layer protection design, including a built-in aerosol fire suppression module and UL-certified LFP battery cells for enhanced safety.

• Smart Control: The system is powered by our intuitive ECOS app, which learns your energy habits and monitors grid prices to automatically optimise your savings.

For Your Business: The PowerCore

The PowerCore is a robust Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) designed for commercial and industrial clients who need to manage high energy costs and ensure operational continuity.

• Drastic Cost Reduction: PowerCore allows businesses to slash energy bills through "peak shaving"—storing cheap off-peak energy to use during expensive peak hours.

• Certified Quality: The PowerCore is built with world-leading CATL LFP battery cells, and the Volta Eco battery range is rated as Tier 1 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance—a standard achieved by only 2% of global manufacturers.

• Energy Resilience: It provides a vital backup power source, ensuring your business remains operational during grid outages and protecting you from costly downtime.

Our home battery range

Our commercial battery range

Charged up?

Ready to learn more about PowerPod battery storage systems? Get in touch with Volta Eco experts today.

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