Electricity Cost Per kWh in the UK

A unit of electricity costs 26.32 pence under the Ofgem price cap from 1 October to 31 December 2026, plus a standing charge of 54.83 pence a day. That is the national average for a Direct Debit customer in England, Scotland and Wales, and unlike every previous quarter it carries no VAT at all.

The government zero rated VAT on domestic electricity in Great Britain for the winter. Ofgem's own tables now carry a warning that costs "cannot be compared directly to previous periods because of this change", and that warning is doing a lot of work. The headline unit rate went up by less than a penny. The price underneath it went up by a good deal more.

What a kWh of electricity costs right now

26.32p per kWh and 54.83p a day, for the three months from 1 October 2026. Ofgem calls this cap period 17a. The figures below are the national averages for customers paying by Direct Debit, published on Ofgem's energy price cap unit rates and standing charges page.

The headline cap for a dual fuel Direct Debit household went from £1,663 to £1,723 a year, a rise of 4 per cent. Standard credit customers went from £1,796 to £1,861, prepayment from £1,620 to £1,678, and Economy 7 on Direct Debit from £1,039 to £1,046, a rise of just 1 per cent. Those are Ofgem's figures from the summary of changes letter published on 26 August 2026.

All of those annual figures assume a household using Ofgem's medium typical domestic consumption values, which since 1 July 2026 are 2,500 kWh of electricity and 9,500 kWh of gas a year, or 3,400 kWh for a multi register meter. The old 2,700 kWh electricity figure is out of date and still turns up in plenty of comparison articles.

Why the unit rate barely moved when wholesale costs rose 11 per cent

Because VAT on electricity in Great Britain dropped from 5 per cent to zero on the same day. HMRC's Revenue and Customs Brief 10 (2026) sets the temporary zero rate for qualifying domestic electricity supplies in Great Britain from 1 October 2026 to 31 March 2027. Gas stays at 5 per cent, UK wide.

Ofgem's cost breakdown shows what was happening underneath. The wholesale allowance rose 11 per cent and now makes up 47 per cent of the cap rather than 44 per cent, with the electricity wholesale allowance alone up 10 per cent. Ofgem attributes it to conflict in the Middle East, extreme temperatures across Britain and Europe pushing cooling demand, and low wind generation forcing more reliance on gas fired power.

So the two movements cancelled each other out on your bill. Here is the arithmetic, which is ours rather than Ofgem's:

• The July to September rate of 26.11p included 5 per cent VAT, so the pre tax price was 24.87p.
• The October to December rate of 26.32p carries no VAT, so 26.32p is the pre tax price.
• Like for like, the underlying price of a unit rose about 5.8 per cent, not the 0.8 per cent the headline suggests.
• Had VAT stayed at 5 per cent, you would be paying roughly 27.64p a unit. The cut is worth about 1.32p per kWh.

The same thing happened to the standing charge from the other direction. It looks like it fell from 57.19p to 54.83p a day. Strip the VAT out of the July figure and it was 54.47p, so the underlying daily charge actually crept up.

What you actually pay depends on which region you are in

Between 25.36p and 27.86p per kWh, depending on where you live. The national average hides a spread of 2.50p, or about 10 per cent. Ofgem publishes benchmark maximum charges for each of the 14 energy regions in its cap period 17a benchmark tables, as an annual figure at nil consumption and an annual figure at medium consumption. The per unit rates below are what those two figures imply for a single rate meter on Direct Debit, and the unweighted average of the column comes to exactly the 26.32p and 54.83p Ofgem publishes as the national average.

Merseyside and North Wales is the worst region on both counts, paying 2.50p more per unit than the East Midlands and £90 a year more in standing charge than London. A household there using 2,500 kWh pays £943.50 a year for electricity. The same consumption in London costs £821.53. That is a £122 gap for identical usage, set entirely by the cost of the local network.

Ofgem is explicit that the standing charge varies by region because of how many people live there, how much energy the region uses, and the cost of building and maintaining the network. It is not something your supplier chooses.

The standing charge is the part solar cannot touch

Solar panels reduce the units you buy. They do not reduce the standing charge, which is £200.13 a year at the national average and £246.95 in Merseyside and North Wales. You pay it whether you import 4,000 kWh or four.

This matters when you read a payback calculation. A quote that says a system "eliminates your electricity bill" is wrong on its face, because staying connected to the grid has a fixed annual cost. Even a home with panels, a battery and near total self sufficiency keeps paying it. The honest framing is that solar cuts the variable part of the bill, and the fixed part is the floor.

It also shifts where solar looks best. The regions with the highest unit rates are not the ones with the highest standing charges, so there is no single "best region for solar" on price alone. London has the cheapest standing charge in Britain and one of the dearer unit rates, which is a good combination for a solar owner. Merseyside and North Wales is dear on both.

What 26.32p a unit means for solar panels

Every unit your panels produce that you use in the house saves you 26.32p. Every unit you export earns roughly 12p. Self consumption is worth about 2.2 times as much as export, and that ratio is the single most important number in domestic solar economics.

Octopus Energy pays a flat 12p per kWh on Outgoing Octopus, with a peak shaped variant paying 16p between 4pm and 7pm and 9p the rest of the day. Rates vary by supplier and are set by the supplier, not by Ofgem, which is why we keep a separate page on Smart Export Guarantee rates.

Put the two numbers together with the Energy Saving Trust's benchmark system and the picture is straightforward. A 4.5kWp array generates roughly 3,300 to 5,085 kWh a year depending where in Britain you are. Take a Manchester roof, which the MCS tables put at about 3,900 kWh a year for that size. Use half of it in the house and that half is worth about £513 at 26.32p. Export the other half and it earns about £234 at 12p. Same electricity, less than half the value, purely because of when you happened to need it. Against the Energy Saving Trust's £7,600 benchmark cost for a 4.5kWp install, the self consumption share is doing most of the work.

Which is why the things that raise self consumption keep coming up on quotes. A battery moves midday generation to the evening, converting 12p export into 26.32p avoided import. A power diverter does the same job for your hot water at a fraction of the cost, though it trades away the export payment on whatever it uses. Neither is free, and whether either pays depends on the gap between your unit rate and your export rate. Right now that gap is 14.32p.

Northern Ireland is a different market entirely

The Ofgem price cap does not apply in Northern Ireland, and neither does the VAT cut. Electricity there is regulated by the Utility Regulator, which approves Power NI's regulated domestic tariff separately. Its announcement of 29 May 2026 confirmed that "Power NI's domestic electricity tariff will increase by 6.2% or £64 a year" from 1 July 2026.

Two further differences matter if you are in Northern Ireland pricing up solar. HMRC's zero rate applies to supplies made in Great Britain only, so domestic electricity in Northern Ireland stays at 5 per cent VAT. And the Smart Export Guarantee is a Great Britain scheme, so the 12p export rates quoted on this page are not available to you. Check what your own supplier offers for export before assuming any of the payback maths on a mainland quote transfers across.

Where the rest of your bill actually goes

Wholesale energy is 47 per cent of the cap and networks are 24 per cent. Everything else is small. Ofgem publishes the split each quarter, and for a Direct Debit customer in cap period 17a it looks like this.

The 6 per cent policy line is the one people argue about, because it funds schemes including the Energy Company Obligation. It is smaller than most assume, and considerably smaller than the network costs that nobody complains about. Whether solar is a good idea for your roof turns on your unit rate and your generation, not on the policy line.

How to find your own number rather than the average

Read it off your bill, not off a table. The cap sets a maximum, so many tariffs sit below it, and a fixed deal you signed last year could be well above or below today's figure. Your bill states the unit rate in pence per kWh and the daily standing charge, usually near the top of the second page.

1. Find the unit rate and standing charge on your latest bill or in your supplier's app.
2. Check whether you are on a single rate or a multi register tariff such as Economy 7. Economy 7 has two rates, and the peak one is what solar displaces during the day.
3. If you are on a fixed tariff, note its end date. That is when your solar savings figure changes.
4. Use your own unit rate, not 26.32p, whenever you check an installer's savings estimate.

If you are shopping for quotes, giving installers your actual unit rate and annual consumption is the fastest way to get an estimate you can argue with. A firm that sizes a system without asking either is guessing.

Electricity cost per kWh: frequently asked questions