Ofgem has proposed changed to the structure of electricity bills, whereby customers will be offered a tariff that has zero or low standing charge, which will be controlled by the price cap. Ofgem’s price cap changes benefit solar and battery storage customers.

Many customers with solar simply use the electricity generated by their solar panels, and then export the rest. These customers probably benefit for the Feed in Tariff, and installed their solar panels some years ago. Since the actions of these customers  is driven by financial incentives, they haven’t yet seen a significant additional reason to act.

Well perhaps this is that reason.

This change – if implemented – heavily incentivises customers to reduce their energy use. Or to put it another way, you fully benefit from reducing your energy use. So if – for instance – you use zero electricity for 6 months of the year (due to a solar array) you’ll have zero bill.

Adding in a battery to the mix further increases the benefit, since you can only achieve something like a 6 months zero bill by storing excess electricity during the day for use at night.

For high-use customers, with an electric car or a heat pump, this new tariff is unlikely to make a difference. But for everyone with a roof, the benefits to solar and battery storage just increased by something like £180 per year, or £4500 over a 25 year lifecycle of an Enphase micro-inverter.

For more information check out Martin Lewis: More energy deals with NO standing charges could be on the way