ELECTRICITY PRICES

Skents

Skents

Well-Known Member
Joined
18 Jan 2005
Messages
253
Location
SW UK
www.theiguana.co.uk
We have a winter berth at Falmouth Yacht Haven, run by Falmouth Harbour Commissioners. The price of electricity has just risen to 25p per unit - how does this compare with what other people are paying? Is this reasonable, cheap or extortionate?
 
The marina cannot charge you more per unit than they themselves pay!...how they make their money is by charging a weekly fee to use the power sockets in the first place!!

Paul.
 
That's interesting. We pay by buying cards (for £5 or £1) which are then inserted into the power bollard.

Does this infringe electricity pricing rules or not? Does anyone know how I could get chapter and verse on the rules that govern electricity charges?

Thanks
 
Most marina's are theving gits when it comes to leccy. I'm out of the water at post solent and they are charging somthing like 5p/unit for the Leccy and 10-15p/unit for delivery of leccy (infrastructure). and they have the balls to tell me it is sold "At Cost"

Serious con if you ask me but what other option is there...?
 
If they price the electricity 'delivery' as a per unit charge then they are breaking the law. If they charge a fair quarterly or monthly meter reading charge then that is permitted. Electricity must be sold at cost as has been stated. Pre paid meter cards and coins are excepted.

Marinas still see electricity as an optional extra for boats, so they put in too few points and charge outrageous meter reading fees. Hopefully the change in economic climate for marinas will see some of their attitudes become a little more customer focused.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Serious con if you ask me but what other option is there...?

[/ QUOTE ]

You need to find out the infrastructure and maintenance costs first, otherwise yours is just another ill-informed opinion /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

Bollards and their installation are expensive bits of kit, and they are regularly wrecked by customers driving off before unplugging (just as an example). AFAIK my marina has not yet charged an offender for a replacement.

As another example there has been a recent bizarre theft - someone obviously needed some s/s self-tappers urgently, so they were taken from the bollard sockets, leaving them hanging on the wires. Only a couple of quid to replace the screws sure, but staff time costs.

This doesn't justify a company over-charging of course, but the point is that if you don't know the costs involved then don't call it a "con".
 
Bollards must be cheap in France then since we get free electrics on their visitor berths!

We are on a metered supply at our YC marina and pay normal rates with no extra fiddle factors. Any maintenance of the system comes under the heading of maintenance just as does replacing any damaged pontoon planks, they don't add a charge for carrying the planks down from the workshop for those either. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Thanks Damo, that's me told then...

In all seriousness, I appreciate that there is and up-front cost for installing electrical infrastructure and ongoing maintenance but I can't help feeling that the cost for this should be covered in the berthing and storage costs that are already paid (at a reasonable rate).

I think I'm paying about £20/month for power, if £15 of that is for infrastructure and the "average" boat is out for 3-4 months that adds up to quite a lot of cash for providing the infrastructure.

Seriously looking at other alternatives for next winter.
 
Different approach in France though. AFAIK many places are owned and operated by the local authority, so they look at the community profit from visitors. A private company needs the marina itself to profit.

I don't personally know how prices are calculated in my marina, but I do know how much work and expense is involved in the running and maintenance. That's why it pi**es me off when there are knee-jerk comments along the lines of "rip-off" and "con" from ill-informed posters /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
So [ QUOTE ]
Different approach in France though. AFAIK many places are owned and operated by the local authority, so they look at the community profit from visitors. A private company needs the marina itself to profit.


[/ QUOTE ]

Some are local authority owned but many are not. We could get a 13m berth in several of the South Brittany ones that are privately owned for under half what we currently pay for our 'non-profit making' club marina and the group that runs those French ones, in a pricey area too, do it to make money. Even the MDL owned ones are cheap in France by UK South Coast standards.
 
[ QUOTE ]
but for anyone to defend marina pricing is a surprise for me....

[/ QUOTE ]

...For those who don't know, or haven't worked it out, I am both a liveaboard berth holder, and an employee of my marina, so I see both sides of the argument on a daily basis. I'm not trying to defend pricing per se, just pointing out that a lot of comment is ill-informed /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
Thats fair enough.

I do see a bit of a watershed this year though.....

I have noticed that there seems to be substantially higher numbers of empty berths than i've seen before.... i'm aware of, even just locally to me, two marinas that normally have extended waiting lists that currently have empty berths available.

Now.... its not a dig.... I appreciate and fully support the need for a business to maximise its returns.... but I think the marina market place has not yet understood the dramatic changes in market conditions.... I suspect that calendar year 09/10 renewals will be somewhat more agressive in their pricing in an attempt to attract the significantly reduced number of customers.
 
I don't read Yachting World regularly, but I noticed that there was a full-page advert for the Berthon Lymington Marina in the December edition. Now, maybe YW carries marina adverts every month - or maybe it's a sign oof the times? I can't recall having seen a big ad. for a marina for many years.....
 
You could pretend you are a long term sailing liveabrd and disconnect from the shore power and use Solar and Wind to run the systems on your boat!

Another advantage of not being plugged in is the "electric earth leak" that eats your anodes will be reduced though not eliminated.

/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
 
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