We are currently holidaying in the Devon Cliffs Holiday Park at Sandy Bay, Exmouth. We arrived last week from Northampton, having charged on the M4 at Chieveley and on the M5 at Sedgemoor.
The Solar Charge Points at Devon Cliffs – and only 2/3 of the cars shouldn’t be parked there! (Image: T. Larkum)
On arrival we found a pleasant surprise – a solar powered charging bay in the main reception car park. I have since learned that it was installed about a year ago in a joint venture with Bourne Leisure (owners of the park), Solarplicity and POD Point.
Having last charged at Sedgemoor, about 60 miles back, we didn’t need to charge again for the first few days. Then I started looking into how to start a charge – doing some Googling, searching on the POD Point online map (which didn’t show the charge point), installing the POD Point app, etc.
However, it all turned out to be unnecessary – I called POD Point and they explained that it was a private charge point – hence not on the public map – and that it was free to use. In hindsight I should have just plugged in and tried it!
The POD Point charge points at Devon Cliffs (Image: T. Larkum)
We have since made good use of the charge point, leaving the car on charge overnight most days. It is marked as a 7kW point which should charge our i3 in about 4 hours. In fact I am seeing charge times significantly longer than that so I would guess it is actually running at about half that, 3.5kW. Perhaps that has something to do with being solar powered, e.g. a reduced charge outside sunny hours, I don’t know. Anyway, the car is fully charged every morning so it doesn’t really matter.
The charge point has been a real boon – allowing us to go on long trips out most days without needing to find anywhere else to charge.
And all our holiday motoring for free.