Electricity costs for holiday homes

[Stateside Canary]

I have been reading the posts on the cost of electricity in France under a couple of other topics here with great interest, but most refer to homes which are occupied full-time.

Until now we have been paying under Option Heures Creuses with EDF for our cottage, but we were recently told by a friend living in France that Option base would be much cheaper under our circumstances, as the standing charge is much lower. Apart from a couple of longer holidays each year, we hope to visit the cottage about once per month for a day-trip, with the occasional overnight stay, and it will not be let out to anyone else. We have a small stone property with 3 bedrooms, a living room (with wood-burning stove), kitchen and small bathroom, and apart from lighting and the usual kitchen appliances (oven, kettle, iron, small microwave, fridge), a water heater, and a small electric radiator in our bedroom, nothing much bigger than a portable CD player and DVD player will be used. We have a 9kw supply, and there are usually only 2 of us there.

I am waiting for a reply from EDF giving advice on which tariff would be cheapest for us, but in the meantime would be glad to know if anyone has any experience of electricity costs for a small property occupied on a limited basis such as ours, especially as some members seem to think that the advice from EDF tends to be a little biased!

Thanks.

[robinwolf]

Hi,

We were in the same situation as you, 9kw supply, 2 of us visiting for weekends & longer times during the main holidays. Our house was fixed up to option heures creuses (HC), but after some research we switched to option Tempo.

Tempo has peak & off peak rates & the standing charge is a little higher, but the rates are very different. The rates are colour coded, red; white & blue. EDF is only allowed to use red & white between 1 November & 31 March. In this time they are allowed to use 22 days for red and 43 days for white. Never more than 2 red days at a time & red is not allowed @ the weekend. (Hope you follow this!) The white rate is slightly higher than HC, the red rate is expensive, about 6 times the HC rate!! Blue rate is a lot cheaper @ 50% of the white rate. The blue rate is applied every day between 1 April & 31 October and on the remaining days that are not red or white during the remainder of the year.

The big attaction for 2nd home owners is that you are less likely to be @ your house during the winter, therefore will not be hit by the red days. EDF determine the colour of the days and they give you a small light indicator which you plug into a socket & this lights up to tell you the colour for the day. At about 1900h every evening EDF send a signal which tells you the colour for the next day. Therefore if it is red you have time to get the firewood in & switch off all non essentials.

We visited our house for 4 days after Christmas & we has 2 white & 2 blue days, so we were pleased about that.  

Hope this helps you

Robin Wolf  

[robinwolf]

A little more for you. I have just had a look @ my book on French life & the Option tariff is "not recommended unless you use little or no electricity". It seems you get no reduced night rate & the rate is higher than the white rate on the Tempo tariff.

You pays your money & takes your choice

Robin

[Nelson]

Hi

We too have option tempo on a 9k supply, I think that you can have up to 5 red days in a row but never on a public holiday or at week-ends.

 

Regards colin