Fair use of electricity on sites

[TheBig1]

I am intrigued by some responses reference the cost of electricity on sites. Does everyone realise that hook up points supply electricity at the commercial rate, not domestic? You pay less per Kwh at home, because it is not a business. A recent conversation with a site owner regarding rallies, they were considering turning off the supply to the site, as the amount they have to charge is deemed too high by many campers but barely covers the cost of supply and maintenance

 

[starquake]

I am intrigued by some responses reference the cost of electricity on sites. Does everyone realise that hook up points supply electricity at the commercial rate, not domestic? You pay less per Kwh at home, because it is not a business. A recent conversation with a site owner regarding rallies, they were considering turning off the supply to the site, as the amount they have to charge is deemed too high by many campers but barely covers the cost of supply and maintenance

That would have been case in 2022 and supply crunch when business energy was 50p to 75p a unit and domestic was price-capped at under the cost of supply to the eneergy firms and refunded via the governement price guarantee. As of July onwards this year, that is 100% not the case and the price cap is under the guarantee rate so it's no longer subsidised energy domestically. (https://www.businesselectricityprices.org.uk/ is a good datapoint give it compares all the major business use tariffs as of this month) Business energy deals (on a fix) as of now are considerably cheaper than domestic on a 2 year fix averaging at under 29p, around 27p a unit for best rates (note as a fix, not flexi - where domestic still wins on flexi), where the best fix I'm offered domestically is 30p at moment. The issue is many business electricity consumers fixed at height of last years crunch on a 2 year fix so are paying much more indeed (75-80p a unit) and are commercially stuck with it until next years renewal. Which was a foolish fix in hindsite, but many businesses are uncompetative due to such fixes because they fixed for 2 or 3 year instead of 1.

The entire CAMC whining about energy just indicates to me they fixed at a non-optimal time for a overall higher rate than they should when at the same time many other commercial organisations have added solar or shares of commericial wind to offset the higher prices rather than just paying them for no commercial return. Owning your own baseload generation via wind is an "interesting" hedge that many datacentres employ (in fact I know all of the big 3 datacentre cloud compute companies do this, and started this well before 2022!). I also note a lot of local farmers are putting solar in to offset their baseload. Strange our campsites havn't considered this, as the toilet blocks could likely be entirely solar powered in many cases...

In my view the move to metering on sites will be capital intensive, but then may not actually benefit sites as prices reduce, and other sites then offer a unmetered supply as energy again becomes so cheap they throw it in in a few years. I'd prefer more sites just offer a no-electric hookup option as many third party campsites do today, and allow us to pay a token £3-5 for the use, but meter the actual EV chargepoints please!. I'd also hope they consider using solar and maybe wind to hedge their use as it's probably cheaper in capital then meters for all the supply points.

I'm more than an interested party here, I actually own a share of a windfarm myself, OOI we as a co-op are contracted to supply octopus energy at 27p a unit until next March so I cant see rates reducingmuch below that until after then, but we long-term expect the windfarm to generate at 8-10p a unit and repay the capital we all paid in ~ 13-18 years. If any indication, the generation for last month alone repaid 3% of the capital to build entire windfarm so we actually well ahead of that with around 30% of the farm repaid at midpoint of year 2 in the payments we get (this should have taken 5 years instead of 1.5)... But in reality if Hinkley point is sold to energy firms at ~ 11p a unit as it is, it should indicate the current prices are a short-term thing, and we all expect (as generation owners) prices to soften probably to around the above level with some peaks above in winters.. If it doesn't we are hedged from the higher prices and the investment was sensible... if it does soften the capital outlay will be repaid and a small profit over 25 years will be made (likely less than we could make even in a bank). The wind farm was ~ £2.5m and split across around 780 people for interest (so average buyin was about £3k)).

 

[cyberyacht]

CAMC appear to have taken no steps to mitigate energy consumption. All the Facilities blocks should have solar roofs by now. Additionally, since most operate off LPG, it's time they had a dispensing unit fitted to enable them to supply customer's refillables. They're just living in the past.