Caravan Park Site Metering – Llandovery, Wales

Challenge

With energy costs skyrocketing our Loxone solution for this caravan park owner could not have come soon enough.

The caravan park in question has two types of pitch, one type for short stay touring caravans and another for longer term seasonal users. It is this second type of pitch the park owner was most interested in finding a solution for in order to be able to change his business model from a fixed-price charge to a model of being able to charge his clients for the amount of electricity they used.

The challenge of the project was to be able to easily retrofit an energy monitoring and control solution to 48 existing seasonal pitch electricity hook-up points without running any new cables. Additionally the solution had to meet the requirement of being easily installed and with the ability to measure electricity consumed as well as means of turning hook-up points off remotely.

Consideration was also given to the fact the park owner charges a different fixed-price depending on whether a client is on-site in their caravan or not and therefore a means of recording the number of days occupied on-site was to be provided.

The visibility of both energy consumed and number of days on-site should also be shared with his clients. The idea being that if they can see how much they were using they were more likely to be conscious of the costs and therefore use less. The added feedback on the number of days occupied enables the client to verify the fixed price portion they were due to pay. The extra charge for being on site covers other costs such as toilet and shower facilities so it was important for the park owner to know what fixed price to charge his clients.

Naturally, clients should only be able to see their own usage for their own pitch whilst the park owner needs to have visibility of all the pitches. Additional functions such as being able to reset the meter whenever a client pays up to date of course should only be visible to the park owner.

The park owner also stipulated a requirement to “take control” of a pitch under certain circumstances. There are times when a seasonal pitch is not occupied, for example when the caravan is taken off-site for servicing or indeed has been taken away for a holiday elsewhere. In these circumstances the vacant seasonal pitch can now be used as a touring pitch but this should not affect the meter reading already recorded for the seasonal users who normally occupies that pitch. In other words when a seasonal pitch has been “taken over” by the park owner it should freeze the meter reading. At the same time all energy usage should be captured when “taken over” to gauge how much energy the touring caravan has used.

Solution

The first challenge was come up with a means of installing physical electricity meters that would both work with Loxone whilst avoiding running any cables which was going to be to impossible over such a large area that is in use all year round, not to mention the disruption to the site it would cause. For this reason we had to find an energy recording device that would work over Wi-Fi.

Having already replaced the parks existing Wi-Fi infrastructure beforehand we were confident that a reliable means of taking readings from a physical meter by this method was possible.

The second part of the challenge was a little easier because the meter we chose also conveniently had a built in relay that could be turned on and off through its web based API over the network. This solved the problem of being able to turn the power on and off remotely using a high current contactor operated by the built-in relay of the meter all controlled from the Loxone Miniserver.

The next part was coming up with a solution to make the unit easily retrofittable without lots of re-wiring at the hook-up. For this we used a suitable IP rated enclosure to house all the parts required with tails inside a flexible conduit. All the electrician then had to do was to remove the busbar from the existing hook-up consumer unit and connect the tails to the supply and each of the MCB’s supplying the hook-up outlets. Having “inserted” our meter into the electricity supply, our unit was then able to take measurements going to each hook-up. As the number of outlets on each hook-up unit varied from one to three we supplied three variations containing the appropriate number of meters.

Now the physical solution had been developed, all that remained was to program the “magic” in Loxone Config. Having worked out the logic to meet all of the park owners requirements, this was easily achieved through the various software blocks provided by Loxone and some clever supporting logic around these blocks for taking and recording the usage across all 48 meters. Using the Loxone Permissions Management functionality enabled us to easily provide limited access for clients to view just their own usage and to turn the power on/off whilst providing a complete “park” view for the park owner. The solution also provides a record of the number of days occupied on-site for each pitch which the park owner can reset at the billing cycle for each client.

Prior to installing our Loxone solution the park owner was losing money with his fixed-price business model as energy prices started to rise sharply. Now the solution has been in place, clients are charged for what they use saving the park owner money. As a consequence of providing visibility through the Loxone App to each of his clients of their usage, this has had the knock-on effect of drastically reducing the amount of energy being consumed at the park so it is much better for the environment too.