Electricity debate

[Klyne]

Interesting debate and it perhaps is typical of the sort of debates you get on forums such as this. I don't expect anyone here would claim to represent the 'majority view' and there is the problem. Perhaps people that contribute to debates might be representative of say 1% of the camping community but who knows. I suspect the truth is that the vast of majority of campers do not give a jot! They just want to turn up on site and plug in, as simple as that.

 

I can't see any justification for reducing the ampage. Its often a balance throughout the year in the midle part of the year I expect the consumption of electricity is relatively low. Most of those modern things we lug around with us now are relatively low in consumption. However as you get towards winter I much prefer to use electric heating. There are always going to be examples of those that abuse the use of electrics but I reckon the majority are sensible.

 

A couple of years ago we stayed at a site in Germany which had a metered supply. Now I can't explain or justify the basis of their charges but I was a bit shocked when I got the bill! Its was on the high side because we prefer to use our own facilities. I have often thought that meters were quite widespread in Germany but on our recent trip where we stayed on 10 campsites not one of them had meters and as an aside the majority had 10/16 amp supply.

 

I suspect the reason why the Caravan Club won't introduce meters is that they take the view that members, generally, would not accept it. Lets face it the have recently opened a couple of completely new sites where they would have had the ideal opportunity to do so. Any bets on the situation staying the same?

 

David

[maggyd]

We stayed on an Aire in France we needed to buy tokens from the newsagent they where 2 Euros I bought three but we got a shock when we put one in it was 2euros for 10mins and water which was no good as we didnt have a thread fitting for the tap!! 8-) Now Thats what I call expensive :-S what can you use 10 mins of electric on?

[passionwagon]

8-) It is intended to be used for pumping out holding tanks. *-)

[gboden65]

Hi Tracker,

Yes I am with you and the "sod the planet gang", let them have a quite word with China,India,and Brazil, about it,

And as for the leccy on sites, as an old bloke that lives in my little wheely

bin all year round,I am going to have a meeting with my social worker to

see if I can claim any "credits" to off set the cost. (lol)

[PeteH]

Hi

 

Haven Hollidays site at Skirlington Yorkshire are using the "charged card" system on their Newest pitches. "Camping La Manga" In Spain will be Metering electricity 2009-10 season (6kw p/d free).

 

As For the "Quote":-

 

"Just for the record, sod the planet, let's look after ourselves and let the planet look after itself as it is far from proven that motorists in general, the UK in general or me specifically are solely responsible for the natural evolution of the planet's cyclical climate system.

 

It seems that we alone are being taxed as if we are totally responsible for all the ills of mankind and not just the foul ups of successive incompetent governments jumping on a convenient passing band wagon whilst trying to cover their own grubby backsides.

 

Remember, it was only a few short years ago that the prophets of doom were telling us that we were heading for another mini ace age.

 

So what changed in such a short time scale, in planetary terms."

 

NOTHING!!! Just the politicians found a new way to make the population think that "More TAX is good"!!! every time I hear the word "green" I check my wallet and bank statement to see how much (more) they have nicked!!

 

Pete

 

Ps, How do you know a politician is lying? answer: the lips are moving!!

[Guest Tracker]

Following a recent outbreak of Swine Fever amongst politicians it was determined by everyone else that the cause was far too many snouts being in too small a trough at the same time!

 

Green is certainly the appropriate colour for 'environmentalists' to use as that's what we will be if we choose to believe it all!

[Tomo3090]

In Torre Del Mar earlier this year we parked next to a German van that had been there all winter. Because he had been there longer than 30 days he was on a metered supply. To reduce his costs he had 2x100 watt solar panels fitted to his van and he found he had reduced his electricity consumption by half compared to the season before when he had no panels, thus reducing his site costs.

 

He had the outlay of his panels to take into account of course but over several seasons on this site he would have recoupped his costs there too I imagine.

 

 

[Guest reiziger]

hia,

i can understand all the confusion about charges for electricity,but you can check all the prices before you enter.

if they are too much do not go in ,or as tomo3090 said fit a solar panel or two that makes a lot of diffirence and on the continent they do tend to ask if you want electric ,not like i found with the uk camping clubs ,where it tends to be inclusive in the high prices .

i prefer the choice to use or not, especially spring summer and early autumn

here in france i always use camping municipals for the washing days ,no elec in summer and never use electric on aires, to dear,but all still much more reasonable then the clubs in the uk.

although the camping and caravanning club give discount for age and international camping card ,not so caravan club all top prices

all the same it is all very expensive now i think

[Rainbow-Chasers]

I'm with brian all the way here - we are just looking into buying our first site, and the costs of upgrades to the sewage system, extra hook ups and all the associated groudworks are absolutely eye watering!

 

I had a great idea of putting in 4/5 RV pitches, as the access was begging for it - the costs of upgrading roadways in compliances with regulations and weight, the pitches to meet the same, hook ups etc, put the price into stupid figures. In order to warrant it, I asked RV owners if they would be willing to pay £5 more than a caravan pitch, all inclusive of power as the others are - It was a resounding 'No' I would have return the cost of that investment in a few hundred years, so it was only a token offering.

 

You have to remember one thing - owning a campsite is very expensive business, upgrading facilities is mind blowing in terms of cost - The owner has caravans and motorhomes because he enjoys the hobby himself - NOT FOR THE MONEY!

 

You can make 6-10 times the amount with statics for the same outlay, same groundwork costs. Which is why so many commercial sites are static orientated. With this new insight, I will never again moan at one site being £3 a night more than the last - i will enjoy the inclusive fee!

[djchapple]

Instead of almost everyone repeating their same old prejudices we should genuinely try and get a solution.

 

Firstly a few ideas gathered from post reviewed here and on other forums.

 

As the much maligned Eddie has pointed out IT'S ILLEGAL to sell electricity at a fixed charge so an extra £2 a night is not on - IT'S ILLEGAL. The fact that they do it on Mars and Venus is not a valid argument for it to be done here.

 

Fitting locked boxes containing meters would be hugely expensive. As the sites CAN ONLY CHAGE the correct rate for the electricity consumed then who would pay for the meters to be installed - everyone in an increased site fee.

 

Again the use of locked boxes and metres would mean an increase in staff activity and most of this would occur in short periods (arrival and depart times) making it difficult to man and ensuring extra delays at departure time.

 

It would also mean that you could not pay the night before - payment could only be made after the electricity had been disconnected.

 

No leaving early morning before the office opened - haven't paid!

 

So what's the solution?

 

No payment for electricity - included a part of the package, making arrival and departure very simple.

 

Electricity meters with probably higher basic site fees to cover installation costs, maintenance and extra staff plus extra delays when departing.

 

Lets have some helpful comments - not the rude and personal comments quite often read on this type of forum posted by people who do not have the intelligence to make a reasoned argument.

 

We are all very different and have different needs. It would be great to find out what the consensus really is.

 

As an aside why should I pay for the club house, games rooms and swimming pool facilities when i don't use them?

 

Shouldn't all the non essential facilities (bar, disco, club house, TV room, swimming pool, children's play area, electricity, TV connections to site, wifi etc) be charged for separately. Why is electricity different?

 

Being serious for a moment if we went down this rout just think how complex it would be for both the owners and the campers to work out in advance how much the pitch would cost per night.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[djchapple]

Tomo3090 - 2009-06-11 10:47 PM

 

In Torre Del Mar earlier this year we parked next to a German van that had been there all winter. Because he had been there longer than 30 days he was on a metered supply. To reduce his costs he had 2x100 watt solar panels fitted to his van and he found he had reduced his electricity consumption by half compared to the season before when he had no panels, thus reducing his site costs.

 

He had the outlay of his panels to take into account of course but over several seasons on this site he would have recouped his costs there too I imagine.

 

 

These panel would have cost about £800 or £900 fitted so if he used the van every day for three years he would need to save about £1 a night.

 

Under average usage they would never pay for themselves.

 

However I do have solar panel because they charge my van batteries and provide power when none other is available.

[Brian Kirby]

All of which leaves one roughly where one now is.  You pay for the provision and maintenance of the connection facility, but not for the electricity used.  Those who don't want it needn't pay, but really should refrain from using it after dark!  :-D 

It would also be sensible, IMO, to reduce the amperage from the almost standard UK 15 Amps, to about 10 Amps, which should be sufficient for most peoples' needs, and should make electric heaters less attractive.  This down rating of individual supplies should allow the price to be dropped slightly, and should also relieve pressure on the site system as a whole, allowing more pitches to have connections without requiring a complete new wiring installation.

[Andy_C]

The legislation was designed to prevent overcharging for the supply of electricity (i.e. site owners making a profit from it) and does in fact allow a flat rate to be paid. It would require a bit of calculation on the part of the site owner, but the the total cost of electricity supplied to the touring pitches per year, divided by the number of 'pitch nights' per year gives a flat rate fee which could be charged per night.

 

The trouble is, of course, that the figure would be relatively low and site owners would lose the, currently hidden, profit that they now make on the supply of electricity by charging an all in price...

 

Andy

[John J Thompson]

djchapple - 2010-04-12 9:07 PM

 

Instead of almost everyone repeating their same old prejudices we should genuinely try and get a solution.

 

Firstly a few ideas gathered from post reviewed here and on other forums.

 

As the much maligned Eddie has pointed out IT'S ILLEGAL to sell electricity at a fixed charge so an extra £2 a night is not on - IT'S ILLEGAL. The fact that they do it on Mars and Venus is not a valid argument for it to be done here.

 

Fitting locked boxes containing meters would be hugely expensive. As the sites CAN ONLY CHAGE the correct rate for the electricity consumed then who would pay for the meters to be installed - everyone in an increased site fee.

 

Again the use of locked boxes and metres would mean an increase in staff activity and most of this would occur in short periods (arrival and depart times) making it difficult to man and ensuring extra delays at departure time.

 

It would also mean that you could not pay the night before - payment could only be made after the electricity had been disconnected.

 

No leaving early morning before the office opened - haven't paid!

 

So what's the solution?

 

No payment for electricity - included a part of the package, making arrival and departure very simple.

 

Electricity meters with probably higher basic site fees to cover installation costs, maintenance and extra staff plus extra delays when departing.

 

Lets have some helpful comments - not the rude and personal comments quite often read on this type of forum posted by people who do not have the intelligence to make a reasoned argument.

 

We are all very different and have different needs. It would be great to find out what the consensus really is.

 

As an aside why should I pay for the club house, games rooms and swimming pool facilities when i don't use them?

 

Shouldn't all the non essential facilities (bar, disco, club house, TV room, swimming pool, children's play area, electricity, TV connections to site, wifi etc) be charged for separately. Why is electricity different?

 

Being serious for a moment if we went down this rout just think how complex it would be for both the owners and the campers to work out in advance how much the pitch would cost per night.

 

 

An excelent CL we use at Sedgefield, has just changed from having electricity in with the fee to a metered supply.

 

You buy a card that charges the meter as you arrive on site £1 for 8 units (8kw) is the rate that has been set. He also sells £1, £5 and £10 cards.

 

He installed this system at the beginning of August as a way of not increasing his site fees per night.

 

He has alrady noticed that one user while out of his van disconnected the supply while he visited another van on site. Last year he had a customer running a heater in his awning all day and night.

 

He has now put his old unmetered points into his rally field and downrated them to 10A.

 

This site has spacious individual bays on level hardstandings surrounded by grass, water and waste point on each pitch with satelite TV ponts on the bollard.

If you ddo not have a box for satelite he will lend you one and the cable for the duration of your visit.

 

The toilet dump point and recyling/waste facility is excellent together with a dedicated motorhome dump point

 

All this for £10 per night.

 

John

[Andy_C]

John Thompson - 2010-08-08 8:54 AM

An excelent CL we use at Sedgefield, has just changed from having electricity in with the fee to a metered supply.

 

You buy a card that charges the meter as you arrive on site £1 for 8 units (8kw) is the rate that has been set. He also sells £1, £5 and £10 cards.

Sounds like a good solution - the rate is about right and you can get reconditioned card meters for about £25, so not too expensive to implement.

 

Andy

[Philman]

I notice that more and more campsites in Euroland are using metered supplies. Mostly the meter is in a locked box adjacent to the pitches, so you can check the start reading and the end reading. Some sites have all the meters in a locked room near Reception, so you have to trust the readings they say you have used.

 

ACSI discount sites used to have 5kW included and you had to pay for anything extra. This year they have reduced the free amount to 4kW per day. The average charged is around 50 eurocents per kW. The most I was charged was 70 eurocents.

 

Phil.

[Andy_C]

Philman - 2010-08-08 12:28 PM

ACSI discount sites used to have 5kW included and you had to pay for anything extra. This year they have reduced the free amount to 4kW per day. The average charged is around 50 eurocents per kW. The most I was charged was 70 eurocents.

 

Phil.

(Pedant mode = on) Presumably that's 4kWh each day, not 4 kW for a day (=96kWh)! ;-)

 

Andy

[AlanYoung]

Visited an ASCII site in Calpe last week, which had metered electricity, as mentioned in another's post the ASCii rate includes 4Kw per day & the additional cost was 50cents per Kw. During my 2 day stop I only used lighting (LED) & water pump plus Aircon for about an hour on one day but incurred an additional charge for electricity of one euro. I would not care to imagine what the cost of electricty might be during the peak season when for me the use of aircon would have been a must. For my part a fixed cost albeit for 5 or 6 amp supply is preferable.

[PJay]

We stayed at Calpe twice this year,.We love the location. Must agree the electric does seem to be questionable. We have aircon, though we only use it when very hot, as we do not mind the heat. Just using the kettle and TV , we went over. I do feel that some people do abuse the free elec (Inluded in fee) with thier Microwaves and outside elec cookers and other gadgets, so maybe a fair system to charge for excess. I would not be suprised to see more of this charging happening, even with the ACSI sites. Calpe still good value for money (the cheapest washing machines I found, and free irioning facilities)

PJay

[David Dwight]

We stayed on a small site in Hampshire a couple of weekends ago and for four nights it cost us £5 on a meter we think thats very reasonable. Recently in Croatia we were asked for 5 euro a night for electric.

 

What annoys us are the people who heat their awnings all day and evening but sit in the Caravan, and pay exactly the same for their electric as us who use very little.

[djchapple]

fjmike - 2008-03-28 11:49 PM

 

Reading through this debate made me ponder a few questions (sorry if it wanders off the original thread)

 

1. If eddie can run a high spec campsite (I have stayed and it is a real good un') and charge £12.00 a night, make a profit after paying out all the running costs such as maintenance, site wardens etc. Then how come for a similar spec. site both the main clubs charge double that amount and charge an annual fee as well???

 

2.Does providing electric mean that peeps try and "get their moneys worth" and use as much electric as possible?

 

3. Would there be any call for separate electrical supplies ie: high usage (10amps +) and low usage (4amps). I know that this system is used a lot on the continent and I am assuming (maybe wrongly) that altering the electric supply is not a big job.

 

4.Why does eddie have to have a go at other forums when it has no bearing on the topic discussed, most people have heard all the arguments before and have made their minds up accordingly. In fact someone on MHF summed it up very well with a pub analogy, you get used to your local but occasionally you sup somewhere else

 

5.We can all find fault but its a lot better if sometimes we agree to disagree and unite to get a fairer deal for all motorhome users

 

6. Finally getting back to the original posted by the OAL mod. No I don't think there is any case for putting meters as this will only push up prices, so we all loose

 

Are you really comparing like with like?

 

Eddie already owns the land so he probably does not include in his costs anything towards this cost.

 

He may well not have include other costs such a some insurance costs, rates etc as these have already been accounted for elsewhere. Cost of keeping accounts, payment of taxes may also not be included.

 

Comparing costs of a campsite which is part of a larger organisation (another example being the touring pitches on a huge Haven site) with a site run simply as a site is not easy.

 

How can you judge what are the true costs of running part of a business unless it is run entirely separately....and then of course it is not part of a larger business.

 

 

[djchapple]

Philman - 2010-08-08 12:28 PM

 

I notice that more and more campsites in Euroland are using metered supplies. Mostly the meter is in a locked box adjacent to the pitches, so you can check the start reading and the end reading. Some sites have all the meters in a locked room near Reception, so you have to trust the readings they say you have used.Phil.

 

I visit 50 - 70 campsites each year, nearly all in France, in my work for a campsite guide and in 11 years I have never come across one campsite that used meters.

[Brian Kirby]

Ah, but if you spent more time in Austria and Germany, on my experience, you'd find metering very common.  As with most things, practise varies quite widely from country to country.

[John J Thompson]

fjmike - 2008-03-28 11:49 PM

 

2.Does providing electric mean that peeps try and "get their moneys worth" and use as much electric as possible?

 

 

Well I have experienced using a CL with metered supply. We used on average 9kWh a day which cost us just over one pound. On another pitch a motorhome used £5 overnight. When he started to use his gas he used less than a pound a day.

 

3. Would there be any call for seperate electrical supplys ie: high usage (10amps +) and low usage (4amps). I know that this system is used a lot on the continent and I am asuming (maybe wrongly) that altering the electric supply is not a big job.

 

It would involve having an additional supply of trips and having to fit them to the unit each time a user wanted more or less power. It would also lead to more trips by overloading the supply. More work to reset the trip if it was not readily available for user reset.

 

6. Finally getting back to the original posted by the OAL mod. No I don't think there is any case for putting meters as this will only push up prices, so we all loose

 

I would be happy to use metered sites. Too many people seem to think that they can run all the electric they want these days. We have just been speaking to a caravanner on this C&CC CS site who is running his van heating and cooking etc off the site supply. He says he doesn't carry gas anymore. His attitude is I am paying for the electricity so why should I pay for gas.

 

The SC charges £10 so I bet at least half of that is being consumed in electricity. We pay the same fee but how long will the CS be able to continue if it is not economicaly viable due to to high electricity use? This site is run by an elderly couple who don't want to go to the expense of fitting meters so the price will have to rise for everyone. It has just gone up by £1 from the beginning of October

 

The CC CL put in the meters because he noticed last year how much his electricity bill had gone up (over 100%). Last winter he noticed a caravan owner was heating his awning 24 hours a day with a radiant heater even when they were off site.

 

It is these high users that will close many CL/CS sites unless meters are put in. If meters are not put in the prices will rise for the rest of us in order to subsidise these high users.

[Brian Kirby]

The fault is with both clubs, in that they decided to put in 15A supplies, rather than restricting the supply to 6/10A as is common in most of the rest of Europe.  That choice was, I suspect, driven by our national preference for tea, requiring boiling water, and so a tendency to take the domestic, 3kW, kettle away in the van.

That apart, a fridge, battery charging, a bit of lighting, and maybe something like a Remoska, used intelligently with a low wattage electric kettle, can easily be serviced from 6 Amps.

It is also interesting how many cookers in UK manufactured vans, and caravans, have an electric element on the cooker hob.  Some even had, if they still do not have, electric underfloor heating!  So yes, those with minimal demand undoubtedly subsidise the greedy ones who use the electricity on exactly the basis of "I'm paying for it, so I'll make sure I get my money's worth". 

Could the supply be metered?  Technically yes, but it raises the, I think spurious, issue of whether the clubs can, legally, "sell" electricity.  Far easier, I think, would be to install 6A (10A at a push) breakers as the default, reduce the price, and then charge a higher fee for those wanting more, not for the electricity, but as an administration charge for fitting, and recording, the higher capacity breaker. 

Would folk trip the 6A job at inconvenient times?  Of course they would, as they do in other countries, but they (mostly!) soon learn how to avoid doing so!  :-)