Is it normal for electricity usage to be capped in holiday rental?

[TreadLightly3]

Hi everyone I’d really appreciate your thoughts/experience on a holiday house rental we’re at in Europe.

Is it normal practice that we’ve been told how much electricity we can use each day included in the price and that we have to pay for any more used over that? Seems a bit unfair given it’s not a cheap place either. Thanks

I've not experienced this in recent years but in the days before air bnb existed, I had to read the meter / pay for electricity for several holiday cottage rentals in Ireland. I guess it stops people being really wasteful when they not in their own home which I'm sure happens a lot. Hopefully the cap is realistic use and you don't have to pay extra.

I've seen it. I think it's sensible, especially these days.

When I was a child in the 1970/80s we used to stay in SC properties around England/Wales and more than once you had to feed an electricity meter with coins to pay for it.

That seems quite little to me, I just checked and my average usage is 12 kWh per day

Thé gîte we used to stay in had an allowance which covered what the owner (who used to live there himself) thought was ‘normal household usage’ After that you paid at rate card on his tariff. He used to recommend guests to use the washing machine and dishwasher at night when electricity was very cheap. We i never had to pay extra.

I’m surprised that the cost of heating and using the filter on the pool is included in the running costs though, that seems more like the fabric of the building maintained. If you switched it off, the pool would need cleaning and maybe refilling, so it’s not just for your benefit.

in spite of MN fervent belief to the contrary, electricity prices are rising fast in most countries. It’s possible that the original calculations on energy use have been superseded since you booked.

I have never heard about this!
If it was not part of the original agreement I would just forget about it. Or at least insist that the electricity used to heat the pool is excluded as you paid extra for a heated pool so in a sense you paid for it already.

He used to recommend guests to use the washing machine and dishwasher at night when electricity was very cheap.

This became standard in the southern Med countries when the 2008 recession hit. We never used to run appliances during the day back home (Spain) growing up. Even today, my parents cannot afford a time-unlimited energy package.

Also standard is not having enough power to to run eg hoover, dishwasher and hairdryer at the same time. Modest households are used to this. When I go back home I always have to check before I straighten my hair example, that nothing else is plugged in. TVs, computers and chargers don't use as much, it's the big items that run on high voltage.

That seems quite little to me, I just checked and my average usage is 12 kWh per day

That's quite high... Most of Italy has a standing 3kWh allowance, when averaged out, so you'd be well over that and spend all of your "allowable" energy in a quarter of the year.

I saw a holiday rentals t+cs (uk) this year saying cars must be charged only at the car charger, and that electricity would be billed separately. Under no circumstances were they to be charged by lead from the house. I expect this will become more common.

We try and stay where all the electric is included - we have stayed in places where it’s calculated separately and I don’t like it. I don’t mind paying, I’d just prefer it to be bundled in with the overall price.

The had one that said the same and we just said no.
owners cannot unilaterally change the contract without your agreement if you’ve paid in the U.K. the agreement is subject to U.K. contract and consumer law.

3kWh seems very low, we use around 12 with just normal usage - washing machine, dishwasher, cooking, TV and lights, no tumble dryer or anything like that.

any holiday place we went to had either a price cap of how much was included or high use electricity items (shower, aircon, hot tub, pizza oven) on a timer.
it's usually in the t&c but I have never seen it in the blurb.

The increased costs have to be covered one way or another surely, though I agree it’s annoying to have it suddenly sprung on you as an additional cost this year due to price rises. Next year owners will either up the total rental price to allow for wasteful holiday makers who switch everything on and leave it on during their holiday (which means everyone pays more regardless), or they will keep a more reasonable total rental price but charge for extra electricity used so wasteful people end up paying more.

Hopefully this guide will help! Not giving you a lot by the looks of things.

electricityplans.com/kwh-kilowatt-hour-can-power/

I stayed at a property in France ( British owners) and on arrival the written instructions told us that ‘excessive’ use of electricity would incur extra charges.
There was no indication of what they considered to be normal usage, or any means of measuring this. It was just a snide way of trying to make us use less when we had no intention of wasting power. It was one of many Penny pinching rules.
Are they saying 5 KW at a time, as in running several appliances at one time or 5 KWh usage for a whole day? If it’s for the day that is far too low. For example a 10KW shower will use 1 KWh in 6 minutes.

Oh bloody hell this doesn’t sound good! If 12 kWh is what people are using as standard and there’s the pool. Plus I had hoped in this heat it wouldn’t be unreasonable to use fans at night but now I’m concerned about what we might be facing when we leave!

I don’t know exactly when we got the contract but we booked about 6 months ago and only got the contract about a month ago or less. Problem is by then everything else is booked and I’ve been on mumsnet long enough to know that if you dare piss off a holiday home owner in any way before your stay they can cancel you for imaginary fire/flood/personal reasons so we didn’t dare say anything!

I think we will have to leave it to complaining at the end if it seems exorbitant cause of course you just don’t know how much the owner really pays for electricity vs what they charge you for “overuse”. It’s starting to sour the holiday already now :(

Well unless they're going to use it as a ruse to unfairly inflate the rental cost then how much could it be?

They're not charging for all the electricity just the 'excess' so find out or ask them to prove what the unit rate is and only pay the rate x units.

The average electricity bill in the UK isn't even £100 pm and if you're there for 1-2 weeks then it shouldn't even be as much as that. If it is they've changed the agreement and you shouldn't have to pay as effectively they've increased the price of the rental which surely they can't do?

Did you book direct or through an agent who could advise?

The place we rent in Spain has a 15kw daily usage cap with 0.40 cents per kW for additional usage. This is a 3 bed property.

@BarbaraofSeville Thank you that does make sense and I can see I’m probably worrying over not much now! We rented with a property site that links holidaymakers with owners (sort of like Airbnb but not them!) and haven’t been able to contact them for anything since booking as they have no effective contact details so I wouldn’t hold out much hope if we needed advice from them!