We're staying at a CMC site nr Uxbridge and we booked via their app. Got an email saying before you arrive you must set up an account with meter-macs.com and top it up with £10 so you can get electricity at the site.
The electricity is now excluded from the pitch price and made available via this third party. Process for turning on your bollard is fairly simple and I noticed that there was a terminal to the portal onsite for those without good mobile coverate - also the site wifi is a beard growing contest.
Cost of 1 night of fairly light use - Alde on low setting 18 degrees and a bit of telly £6.79. Cost of pitch per night including electricity comes out at over £40.
Also got an email this morning from electrity provider saying that credit had fallen below specified level please top up!
CMC sales pitch for this 'service' is that you will only pay for what you use. Just checked our usage on the portal we-ve used 41.78kWh at a cost of £12.54!
Thanks for the alert. None of the Scottish CAMC sites we’ve ever been to are charging separately for / metering electricity. Maybe I should add the word “yet”.
Quote:
CMC sales pitch for this 'service' is that you will only pay for what you use. Just checked our usage on the portal we-ve used 41.78kWh at a cost of £12.54!
So much for progress.
That is about 30p per unit. I don't know what the CMC pay for electricity but 30p a unit is a lot more than I pay at home.
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Quote:
CMC sales pitch for this 'service' is that you will only pay for what you use. Just checked our usage on the portal we-ve used 41.78kWh at a cost of £12.54!
That is about 30p per unit. I don't know what the CMC pay for electricity but 30p a unit is a lot more than I pay at home.
Caravan sites electric is normally charged at commercial not domestic rates.
Quote:
CMC sales pitch for this 'service' is that you will only pay for what you use. Just checked our usage on the portal we-ve used 41.78kWh at a cost of £12.54!
So much for progress.
That is about 30p per unit. I don't know what the CMC pay for electricity but 30p a unit is a lot more than I pay at home.
Business users can't access the capped residential rates. Standing charges in particular can be eyewatering, depending on supply - tens of pounds a day and the third party doesn't provode the service for nothing.
CAMC are a little sly about the metered EHU charge!
For the campsite in question, in the pretty pictures that scroll by on the CAMC web site page, there is the 'Smart Metering' logo, and that would seem to be the last 'indication' of a metered charge! The site features mention EHU, BUT NOT the associated metered charge, and the charging cost/unit is conspicuous by it's absence too! The additional EHU charge doesn't seem to get a mention on the pitch price/night details either! When and where do you get to be informed you will be paying, and how much, for EHU?
That's far from the most costly £/unit charge I've seen for a camp site, but trespassing close to the cost/unit of using GAS instead of EHU! Last time I checked, a Flowgas 10kg Gaslight refill in Costco, it was just under £42 (last one I bought last year was under £41!), that works out at £0.30/kWh, the same as CAMC metered EHU charge! Now most will not have a discount source of gas available to them, but a 6Kg Calor refill can be found for £32, that works out at £0.38/kWh, so metered EHU still favourable, but not a lot of margin.
IF you are on a Gaslow/Safefill LPG refillable system, you could be far better off using your gas that paying a metered EHU charge!
Cynical old so and so that I am, or maybe it's just a lifetime of being around business and costings, CAMC may have shot themselves in the foot here. If they have reduced pitch price as claimed to 'compensate' for now charging for metered EHU, then they have lost an income from all those campers that don't use their former 'bundled' electricity to it's fullest cost, and I'd say that's rather a lot of us!
I've now got a power usage meter in my van, I've recently been away in it for nearly a month on an unmetered CAMC site, so a good time to get daily peak, low and average usage figures. I spent rather a lot of time lounging around in the van as a tad too warm and humid outside for me and my old dog on many a day, so didn't venture out during the middle of the day. Usage was, A/C on a good number of days, blown air heating on a fair few nights, water heater every day (I use the van's onboard shower), lights and TV, electric hob on the stove several times a day, occasional electric toaster, and of course water and toilet pumps (yes I KNOW they are 12v, but they still draw from the EHU via the battery charger/12v converter - they are NOT for free!), no Solar panel charging, so all from EHU. You could justifiably argue I was quite a heavy EHU user considering the time of year. I averaged 7.55kWh (units) per day, with the highest day's usage being 13.3kWh on a day the A/C got a good thrashing, so on average I cost CAMC at THEIR metered rate £2.27 per day, and at worst £3.99 per day, and at best only a paltry £1.29 per day! CAMC were profiting from me most days because I was NOT using electricity to my bundled allowance, how do I know what my 'bundled allowance' was, guessing it's similar to many sites that charge by meter, but ONLY after first 10kWh 'free' usage, that'd be £3/day budgeted for, so in all likelihood CAMC made £0.73/day ave. out of a relatively heavy power user, most I would guess are likely to be closer to the £1.29/day cost, so £1.71/day pitch fee 'bonus'!
How long before the club realise that their reduction in pitch fees is actually costing them? They are the ones paying for the 3rd party metering system, resellers are not allowed by law to resell at an increased price, so the cost of metering HAS to be paid by the club as far as I can see. We'll likely soon see pitch fees rise with the metered EHU charge on top! The club wins, the camper loses!
Quote: Originally posted by david8858 on 22/9/2025
Hi Fiona W
What was a tad more worrying is that Meter-Mac also supply Gas and water. I wonder how long it will be before we get charged for water?
We don’t have water meters at houses in Scotland: we are all supplied by Scottish Water & it’s included in our Council Tax. So I doubt CAMC water will be metered any time soon, except possibly by introducing token or coin payment for showers.
Quote: Originally posted by david8858 on 22/9/2025
Hi Fiona W
What was a tad more worrying is that Meter-Mac also supply Gas and water. I wonder how long it will be before we get charged for water?
We don’t have water meters at houses in Scotland: we are all supplied by Scottish Water & it’s included in our Council Tax. So I doubt CAMC water will be metered any time soon, except possibly by introducing token or coin payment for showers.
I think the grand plan is nearing completion for England where every property is individually metered, and charged accordingly for water usage, I didn't volunteer, but was forced to have a water meter a couple of years back. Friend who lived in a council house used to have their water bill included in the rent, but even further back than my meter, their water bill was separated, and I believe they are now metered!
Water metering on a camp site is a little more complicated with communal stand pipes, but really not beyond technology to issue each camper with a tag that is read at the standpipe for their individual usage! Serviced pitches are of course straightforward, easy to put a meter on each one.
All starts to sound a bit grim, taking the fun and freedom away from camping
We have recently returned from a week at a site with metered electricity (not CMC) and I was surprised at how much we used. We didn’t use more than the 10kWh per day that was included in our pitch price but we also didn’t need any heating because the outside temperature was quite warm. We have decided that we won’t return to that site except in the summer as if we had put our Alde heating on, we would have been way over the allocated amount and would have had to pay more on top of what was already a very expensive pitch fee. From talking to others, I think that the Alde heating is very power hungry, but we love it because of the uniform warmth is brings across the caravan, so we will do our best to keep away from sites with metered electricity unless the pitch price is very low.
For camping in the colder months, I can use the diesel heater for warmth which is what I would normally prefer, being quicker to warm up the van and quieter compared with the roof-mounted air conditional unit.
However, in the warmer months, I shall have to grin and bear it and use the air con if it is really hot, and there had been days when it was too warm to sit in the shade with no wind for me since I had the van from 2021, and the only way for me to cope was to close all the windows, blinds, dividing doors and curtains, put the air con on high and have plenty of fluids!
DK
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Total cost for 2 night stay with light usage
Used
72.79 kWh
Cost:
£21.85
Also got another nag email this morning complaining my balance at £2.99 had fallen below recommended level please top up!
A day of all things motorhome and campervan. The show is held both in the main indoor arena and across the grounds. Catering, hot drinks and food options are available. Easy access to the site and free parking included. Win one of five pairs of day tickets
Topic: CMC Club new energy portal
via mobile 22/9/2025 at 10:55am
