Ofgem said it wants to give consumers more choice on how they pay standing charges, with the plans set to allow households to pay the costs as part of their unit rate by lowering the daily fixed amount. If given the go-ahead, the new tariffs could be available by the end of January. Standing charges are applied daily, regardless of how much energy the customer uses, and are used to cover the cost of supplying energy to homes and businesses. They also cover the costs of building new network infrastructure and keeping the power on when energy suppliers go bust. Ofgem stressed these charges cannot be removed entirely and that they can only be moved from one part of the bill to another, which means they are unlikely to mean lower energy costs.