Smart Metering Trial

Totally agree dt.  We were on a CL at the beginning of March - when it was particularly cold.  They have just introduced metering and have reduced their basic pitch fee by £5 pn. During the first 24 hours, we used the van as normal - space and water heating, kettle, FF, battery charger, small (500w) plug in fan heater in bathroom for 10 minutes whilst showering, occasional use of towel rail etc etc - all on electricity.

The cost for that first day at a fair 37p per unit was £10.20 - which came as a bit of a shock.  Thereafter we ran the heating on gas and the cost for the remaining 6 days dropped to just over £5 per day.  Not sure - but at Safefill prices, we used about £6 or £7 worth of gas for the week.

Very simple system for payment - work out usage for the stay and either pay by BACS or cash left in a cash box in the information hut.

All in all, a very fair system and one which permitted either off-grid use or pay for what you use and resulting in only a minimal increase in costs - if careful.  Most importantly - it was fair to both owner and guests.

Fully agree.

Especially when you consider that for years the price difference between standard and non-ehu pitches has been £5 a night all year round.

It will certainly put me off using sites metered in this way.  My personal choice.

The system IMO is best suited to those who stay on site for longer periods than ourselves as we generally tour staying between 1/3 nights.  

I will keep an eye on developments as I wasn’t aware they were trialling 2 metering systems as someone posted  earlier is to happen. 

Hopefully members will be informed about that system if/when and where it is to be trialled.

Ps Thanks Kieran for letting CT users know whom you are.   

If you stay at Trewethett Farm the difference in July is £5.60 to £6.70. However, strangely, if the difference is just down to average electric use there is only a £3 difference at Altnaharra, where there are no facilities to use. Perhaps the electric is a lot cheaper in Scotland.🤔 Either way both make the proposed £1 July reduction for the trial look extremely mean.

The system IMO is best suited to those who stay on site for longer periods than ourselves as we generally tour staying between 1/3 nights.

We do similar, could you explain why that makes a difference, I can’t see any relevance, the connection should only takes minutes to set up.

Unfortunately not Steve, historically more expensive than the rest of the country, these days pretty much the same as everywhere else.

I thought that might be the case. I suspect the variations in price have nothing to do with electric costs, more to do with what they think they can get. Although I’m not sure why at Trewethett Farm. We had one of the grass electric ones (only one we could get) next to the non electric variety and they were both highly sloping and a quarter of a mile from the facilities.😂

 If, as has been suggested, some will make more use of site facilities to avoud meter charges, the overall site running costs as a consequence will  be back on an upwards spiral. It would have been interesting to see trials on a non facility site too as a comparison.

It would certainly put us off using the trial sites, (not that we would use them  anyway due  to the prices) as we have a 15 year old van which is less well insulated than newer vans, and therefor needs to use more power to heat it.    

I read the blog on CL booking about how to save on fuel use, 1 kW of electricity might heat the water, but would not keep the van warm when it is  cold enough to need heating.  Turning off the heating rather than just turning down would not be good, and our curtains would have no additional insulating effect!

Happy to use gas for heating and HW as puts out 6kW and we have  refillable bottles, but the reductions on site fees are unrealistic, even for more modern vans.

That would indeed have been a logical trial decision to make Brue. I think the metering trial will come as a huge wake up call to some visitors, in terms of just how much energy some visitors do use while away. I hasten to add that I fully respect the choices of others, it’s an individual decision how to take a holiday, how warm you want to be, etc…. But, it should be charged individually (per unit) as far as I am concerned. Facilities provided, or not, other running costs, averaged out onto pitch fee, fully agree with this.