Florida-based Wild Energy Inc. has been making a splash in the outdoor hospitality industry with its metering technology that allows a traditional pedestal to become what it calls a ‘Smartpost.’
Mike Sorensen, the president of Wild Energy, told WOODALLSCM.com (WCM) that the company got its start with ‘smart controllers’ that were placed inside of pedestals and allowed park owners to control the pedestal remotely. However, Wild Energy quickly found that what the owners really cared about was measuring energy consumption.
Wild Energy then designed and began building smart meters. The meters have special electronic boards inside that collect data and send the data back in real-time.
“Every time that meter clicks over one kilowatt, we know about it instantly,” explained Sorensen.
For park owners, that means if they bill daily, weekly or monthly, the system knows the meter value when the camper checked in and the meter value when the camper checks out. Park owners also have access to a portal where they can check electrical usage and meter readings in real-time.
Sorensen noted that having a ‘smart’ system like Wild Energy allows park owners to recover their electrical costs, and ensures that tent campers, smaller units, or those who choose to conserve are not subsidizing the electrical costs of larger RVs and heavy consumers.
“On the consumer side, meters are becoming the norm and campers are becoming more familiar with electrical charges,” he said. “It still can be a hard sell for the overnight or weekend campers that don’t like to get a $5 bill for electrical costs. But for stays longer than a week, as an owner, you’re just throwing money away if your sites aren’t metered. You’re not managing your margins and it’s smart business to recover the cost of providing the electrical service.”
Building electrical costs into a campsite’s fee is trickier and Sorensen said that it can leave people who use less electricity subsidizing larger power users. Sorensen explained that Wild Energy can help park owners with different pricing strategies. “We take a look at what they are doing and recommend options for embedding the expenses or pricing those costs,” he said.
Sorensen demonstrated for WCM this principle and how a park could save money by highlighting a park near Austin, Texas that the company works with. The park has an RVer that was burning 400-500 kilowatts a week, which factors out to around $45 a week in electrical costs.
“On a $750/month site, if you factor electrical costs into your rates, you’re losing almost 24% on high consumption guests,” he noted.
He also pointed out that an RVer at the park who was only using 11 kilowatts (while away) would then be subsidizing the guy chewing up power.
Sorensen said that so far Wild Energy has had the most success with larger parks that understand the return on investment of metering their park’s sites and managing customer margins.
“There is an investment to install meters, but for a typical park, you can see an ROI in about 18 months,” he noted. Parks without meters today can see a return in a matter of months. “What’s your ROI in the $10,000 worth of picnic tables you just bought? There isn’t one. It’s an amenity. There is no return on investment that you can calculate easily. This one has direct dollars tied to it. It’s easy to calculate it.”
Wild Energy is currently building integrations with reservation systems platforms, including a recently completed integration with NewBook and Staylist.
“These integrations help streamline the process for owners, reduce billing errors and allow for costs recovery on short-term stays,” Sorensen said.
