Charging Electric Vehicles

As more people switch to fully electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, some major issues have arisen across caravan parks.

As many parks are “in the middle of nowhere” there is often only just enough electricity to run facilities and caravans. Specifically our electric supply comes in from Skelwith Bridge above ground across poles. Electricity North West have even asked us to run our generator at peak times to take some load off the network!

Issues have also come about because external 3-pin emergency sockets are being used to draw 10 to 13 amps. This is being done constantly while unattended. These sockets are usually wired on standard 2.5 arctic blue cable. Either the cable or sockets can get incredibly hot from continuous demand.

Safety issue

We’ve had a number of overloads and red hot 3-pin plugs at customer caravans. There have already been incidents around the country of extension cables catching fire. We dread to think how the conversation between caravan and car insurance would go in the event of any sort of a loss.

As this is now a safety issue we have been looking at options. These cover both safety and consumption reasons so that people can trickle charge their electric vehicles going forwards. We will therefore prevent the use of standard 13A 3-pin charging on an external socket. Instead we insist on an appropriate intelligent charging socket restricted to 6A maximum be installed. We have been getting quotes for such intelligent sockets that can be installed on your pitch, so please come and see us if you need to charge your vehicle at Skelwith Fold.