Maximum price for Electric per KW
I was recently at a lovely CL and would certainly love to return but was rather surprised to be charged more than £.64 per unit. Is this in order please?
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Comments
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It does seem very high but you would need to know what the CL was actually paying to its supplier to establish if it was the correct price. If the CL owner is paying that much per Kw hour then it is right. What they can't do is profit from the supply of electricity as the rules say they can only charge what they pay per Kw hour. Were you aware of the cost per Kw hour when you booked? Might be useful to add a review for that CL.
David
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Last year we paid £1.05 / kWh if we exceeded the allowance built into the basic site fee. Thankfully we only exceeded it by a very tiny amount during a 7 nights stay. Conversely, another CL charged £0.26 / kWh. It all depends on the tariff that the CL owner is contracted to. On a third, although the CL owner advised that there was a supplementary charge for electric they decided that during summer months it wasn't worth their time and effort to go round and check meters. The number of guests exceeding the built in allowance was very small during the warmer part of the year. They only applied the extra charge during the winter months.
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Wherever we have come across metered electricity on CLs we have generally found the average charge to be somewhere in the region of £0.60-£0.65 pkw so your charge was probably about right.
You have to remember the provider (CL owner) is running a business and quite often, say on farms, the price is what he is paying on business not domestic rates. 2 years ago we stayed at a business CL whose rates had just quadrupled!
DKs comments about the law is correct.
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Hi Barry
If the CL is on a commercial contract with it's provider then yes, quite likely to be that or even higher. I know of fellow CL owners who are still stuck in high commercial contracts, especially if their CL sits alongside another, larger business.
What amazes me at the moment is how many members are booking and staying at CL sites which charge for electric use but they are not asking how much per kWh they will be charged. After their visit they then leave posts on social media telling everyone how they've been 'ripped off' by this site or that site yet when asked what the rate/kWh was they don't actually know!
I appreciate that's not what you're doing here Barry but did you ask prior to booking, arriving or hooking up how much you will be charged? By asking how much you can make an informed decision as to whether you stay there or not.
We charge for all electric used at our CL site and the cost/kWh (currently 25p) is advertised on our website and on the form visitors fill in to work out what they owe.
Skybarn Farm CL, Lincoln4 -
Generally commercial rates are normally cheaper than domestic due to their volume they use. Many CLs use a phase off the 3 phase to supply the CL. However if the CL is using a normal domestic supply for the CL then the rates may be higher than one using a phase off a commercial supply.
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As a CL owner we had no choice but to switch to meters when electricity prices increased. None of our guest have been unhappy and many say that they prefer it.
We make no profit from electricity so what is it that you do not like given that you can check the unit cost before arrival?
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I agree. We’ve only stayed on two CL sites that have metered electricity, but it was no hardship. One site had actually reduced their nightly fee by £5 to take this into account. If I recall correctly, their electricity was 65p per kWh. I have no problem at all with the ethos of paying for what one uses.
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