EVs Stealing RV Campsites!! Not....

valhalla360 wrote:

Reisender wrote:
Yah some of that pencils out Valhalla, but I would think we are typical EV RVers and our daily consumption at a campground is probably quite a bit lower than your estimates. Maybe 25 to 30 kw on travelling days and maybe 10 to 15 kw on days we were staying in the campground and touring the area with just the car. Lots of different factors affecting that of course. We had one place offer to upgrade us to a 50 amp site and then an additional surcharge for charging but we were over half on the battery so it just wasn't worth it. I asked if he wanted anything to charge on the 30 amp site and he said no, the surcharge was only if you charge on a 50 amp site. The only request was that we only plug one thing in at a time, EV or RV. That was actually a common request and we always respected it. (I don't have a way to plug in two things anyway).

Here is a graph of the first 31 days of our last big trip. Roughly 7200 kilometers pretty much 90 percent towing (didn't track that) The blue is home charging (there wasn't any as we were on the road), the red is supercharging and the grey is other charging such as driveways at family, campgrounds, touristy places that had free client charging etc. But it will give an idea of why I say that for us a typical charging event at a campground was probably less than 25 to 30 kwh. The Tesla APP is the source of the graph. All funds in Canadian currency.



Cheers.

Sounds like you are checking in and making the campground aware of what you are doing. That builds a lot of good will and is the right thing to do. If they tell you not to worry about it, you've done your due diligence but as mentioned, when it's one nights charging per week, it's really not worth them bothering with it (50amp sites are typically a few dollars more EV or no EV).

Looks like around 750kwh (34%) was at campgrounds for the month. Assuming the Canadian average price of $0.174/kwh, that's around $145 worth of electricity that will wind up on the campgrounds electric bill.

Yah we always try and check just in case.

So yah, the 34 percent was all free but probably half of that was driveway camping at relatives and even some freebee touristy charging. Some tourist areas have free L2 charging for visitors. Usually at 6 to 8 kW rate.

And remember, if the EV is plugged in the RV wasn’t. Essentially we used more propane as a result. Really the economics didn’t play a role in the decision as I doubt the propane was much cheaper. What influences the decision to charge at the campground isi convenience. So, let’s say one pulls in with half a battery, it’s nice to be able to top up for the next day so one doesn’t need to plan a supercharge. More of a nice to have than need to have but it was a factor.

Of course we tow with an SUV. The economics and dynamics of EV trucks with batteries twice as big will be different. Should be interesting. I still say a surcharge is viable and a possible revenue source for the campground. People are willing to pay for convenience. And I think the “one thing plugged in at a time” rule will become an important rule to make it all work. Otherwise wait for the supercharger (or non tesla equivalent).

Jmho.