So designing an electrical system for a campground is a tedious task. Especially in today's day and age. The campers get bigger every year. Unless a park is new, or built in the last 15 years, it most likely does NOT have 50 Amp at every site. But parks that do, now have another challenge. When any park electrical system is designed, there are a few rules in mind that we all try to adhere to. Not having to many camp sites on any one given circuit. Without getting into to much detail, each 200 Amp circuit should not have more than 10 or so 100 Amp electrical pedestals on it. And those pedestals should never operate at more than 50% of capacity.
So lets talk about that. At your campsite you have a pedestal that has a 50 Amp, 30 Amp, and 20 Amp electrical outlet in it. So that means you have 150 Amp worth of power to use right? Wrong. The pedestal is NOT designed to run all three outlets. Its designed for one at a time. This is typically the problem most campgrounds have on a hot weekend. The system was designed to handle no more than 80% of its total capability. I have seen many campers at Triple R use all three outlets, or even two out of the three. So why is it that we loose power on a hot weekend? Lets look at that.
25 Years ago, most campgrounds would install a 200 Amp circuit, and that would have ten camp sites on it. Each camp site would have a 20 Amp outlet on it. Hence the 200 Amp service. Then campers started growing in size. Campers then needed 30 Amp service. There were too many campgrounds out there that installed 30 Amp outlets where the old 20 Amp outlet was. But the wire underground is not able to carry that power. This seemed like a great idea, but its a fire hazard. Luckily we don't have any of that here at Triple R. But now here we are with half the rigs coming off the assembly line being 50 Amp.
Here at Triple R most of the (95%) park has modern power. But that still seems challenged in 100 degree weather. We are correctly sized, with correct wire sizes underground, with strong voltage from our power company. Still, on a hot weekend, it seems inadequate. Is it that, or are there too many campers drawing WAY beyond what they were allotted?
Today if I walk the park and look at all the utility boxes, most people are using at least two of the power outlets in their utility pedestal. Some have multiple air conditioners, a golf cart, residential refrigerator, 30 gallon electric hot water heater, and a second exterior kitchen fridge This kind of camper is a power hog. Truth be known, that campsite is drawing way more than it should be allowed to. It is drawing more than the two camp sites next to it. I wont name names, but there are more and more of these in the park. These campsites are drawing almost the entire 150 Amps at their sites. No campground system was ever designed for that. It was designed for someone to use the 30 Amp, OR 50 Amp receptacle at each site. That includes the 15-20 Amp golf cart charger that most people have figured out, they can run their AC and everything else in their camper if they just use the extra 20 Amp plug in the electrical pedestal for other things like the golf cart charger or smoker. They never have to reset their breaker even though they are drawing 70 to 90 Amps, when they should only be drawing 30 to 50 Amps MAX. I get it, none of us want to be inconvenienced to have to reset a breaker when its 100 degrees out. But that has now changed.
So what are we doing about it? Well, "we" is the key word. From now on we are only permitted to use the receptacle that your camper has to plug into. No other outlets. (There are sections of the park that are already this way. They only have a 30Amp outlet. Not an issue).
Lets look at some of these typical power draws.
Hot water heater - 13 to 15 Amps
Refrigerator - 13 to 16 Amps (Some have two if you count the exterior fridge).
Microwave - 7 to 11 Amps
Air Conditioner - 13 Amps on a normal day. (Some people have three AC units now)
Golf cart Charger - 15 to 20 Amps
Electric Smoker - 7 to 12 Amps
Electric Flat top - 8 to 12 Amps
Crock pot - 8 to 12 Amps
Built in laundry - 9-13 Amps
Just looking at these numbers and knowing your really only supposed to be using the 50 Amp OR the 30 Amp outlets on your electrical pedestal, you have to ask yourself, how much power am I drawing?
There are lots of other things we can do. We could mandate no electric hot water heaters or no certain refrigerators.... But that would be stupid. Not what we want to do.
So for now Triple R is only allowing each camp site to use ONE outlet in the pedestal. The 30 Amp or the 50 Amp. We also do no allow rigs so large in size that they need three or four A/C's. This helps all the "normal" campers that dont require an entire service for themselves.
Common Core Electrical Math Lesson: So we do try to explain to people that 50Amp power actually has a 100 Amp potential. If you look at the breaker in the box you plug into, note the 50 Amp breaker has TWO poles. Its a double breaker right? That's 50 Amp per pole. NOT a total of 50 Amps. As opposed to the 30 Amp breaker is a single pole. Truly that means the TRUE difference between the two power cords is not 20 Amps, its 70 Amps. Why? Two poles of 50 Amp (100Amp potential) or a single 30 Amp, (30 Amp potential). 100-30=70.
We just recently (May of 2023) had three phase power installed in most of the park. Sites 117-123, All 200's, all 300's, and site 400-411 are effected by this upgrade. Yes, we still require the use of ONE outlet, but after a few hot holidays we will evaluate these restrictions. Stay tuned here. This eliminated the use of the generator and it also eliminates the need for us to run switch power twice a day when its hot and were full. Those days are over.
