By the Home Savings Calculator team · 29 August 2026 · 6 min read
The unit rate is what you pay for each kilowatt-hour you use, in pence per kWh. Use nothing, pay nothing. The standing charge is a fixed daily fee for being connected to the network, charged every day of the year whether the property is occupied or not.
Both are capped by the regulator for standard variable tariffs, and both are printed on every bill and in your online account. Together they are the whole story: annual cost is usage × unit rate, plus standing charge × 365.
Take both figures off your latest bill and put them into the electricity cost calculator. It shows the split as a proportion, which is the number that actually guides what to do next.
If the standing charge is a large slice of your total, you are a low user. Turning things off saves very little, because most of your bill exists before you switch anything on. Your lever is the tariff.
If usage dominates, the reverse holds: shaving consumption pays, and the appliance running cost calculator will tell you where to aim first. Our guide to cutting an energy bill puts the whole list in order of what each change is actually worth.
Never compare on the unit rate alone. A tariff with a lower unit rate and a higher standing charge is worse for a low user and better for a heavy one, and the crossover point depends entirely on your own consumption.
The honest comparison is total annual cost: run both tariffs through the calculator with your real usage and compare the yearly figures. It takes two minutes and regularly reverses which deal looks cheaper.
A property that is empty for months still accrues standing charges every day. For second homes, properties between tenancies or anyone using very little, the standing charge can be most of the bill, and no amount of frugality touches it.
This is the one case where a higher unit rate is worth accepting in exchange for a lower daily charge — which is exactly the comparison the calculator makes easy.
Multi-rate tariffs split the unit rate by time of day: a cheap overnight window and a dearer daytime rate. They only pay if you genuinely shift load into the cheap hours — storage heating, hot water, dishwashers on a timer, or car charging.
For an EV owner they are usually the single biggest saving available, often several times cheaper than the day rate. The EV charging cost calculator and our guide to EV charging costs both show what that shift is worth. If you heat with electricity, check the same question in the heating cost calculator.
