2019-12-10 Services & Organisation Committee Agenda

SERVICES & ORGANISATION COMMITTEE MEETING AGENDA                            10 DECEMBER 2019


4.    Modern Caravans

Modern caravans have evolved into technologically advanced, state of the art products providing
the comfort and convenience of a home. Typically, caravans now include the following:

    Freezers/refrigerators (and often secondary appliances for food, drinks and bait storage).
    Dvd player/stereos
    Plasma tvs
    Sound systems
    Dryers
    Coffee machines
    Front loader washing machines
    Reverse cycle air conditioners
    Microwaves
    Ovens
    Hot water systems

Accordingly, modern caravans have a much greater capacity to consume electricity than older
style caravans, particularly if there is no management strategy in place to encourage less
electricity consumption.

5.    Proposed strategies to reduce emissions

Two strategies are proposed to reduce electricity consumption, decrease emissions and change
electricity consumption behaviour at NRHP. These include installing metered powerheads at all
powered sites and placing solar panels on both amenities buildings. Both strategies are
discussed in more detail below.

5.1   Installation of metered powerheads to powered sites

Council’s existing approach to recovering the cost of electricity at NRHP is via the daily tariff,
which allows unlimited access to electricity at each powered site. Currently, there is no
information available to customers regarding the amount of electricity consumed during their stay
and no financial incentive for customers to decrease electricity consumption.

Installing metered powerheads provides customers with data to make informed decisions about
individual power usage. A metered powerhead is a standalone unit that has plug in outlets, kWh
(electricity) meters and typically, an information screen for meter reading. The technology and
software linked to each metered powerhead enables:

    The provision of real time information to customers regarding electricity consumption.
    Meter readings.
    Electricity consumption data collection.
    Real time wireless transfer of power usage data to specialised powerhead software.
    Automated transfer of power usage information to Council’s booking and payment software
      to enable automated collection of payment (via credit card on departure).
    Minimal administrative input due to a high level of wireless data transfer, back-end
      automation and inter-system communication.

Individual site metering is an established caravanning industry response to managing and
measuring electricity consumption at caravan parks where long term residents occupy with
individual tenancy agreements, however the practice is relatively innovative for short term
accommodation at holiday parks.



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