Business electricity for sports grounds

Sports grounds have a load profile that’s spiky and seasonal. Floodlights pull serious load on training and match nights. The pavilion bar runs late on matchdays and quiet on Mondays. Pitch irrigation runs overnight through summer. Function room hire adds variable evening demand. We compare suppliers across the open UK market with the matchday-peak pattern in mind, not a generic flat profile.

The mechanics of switching are no different from any commercial site. We cover them in our guide to switching business electricity. But ground-specific questions matter: how the supplier prices floodlight load, how to handle separate meters across pavilion, scoreboard, and groundsman’s shed, and whether the contract supports growth if you’re moving to LED floodlights or adding 3G/4G pitch lighting.

Our wider business electricity service covers the whole UK market. For sports grounds we also factor in time-of-use options for overnight irrigation, capacity / kVA charges if you’ve got a half-hourly meter driven by floodlight peaks, and any green tariff routes that fit your governing-body sustainability targets.

Floodlight peaks and capacity charges

Sports grounds with floodlit pitches often run on a half-hourly meter. The floodlight peak demand alone usually pushes you over the threshold. That peak drives kVA / capacity charges, which are a fixed cost layered on top of unit rate. We’ll review whether your declared capacity is set higher than needed and whether switching to LED floodlights could pull the peak down enough to re-rate the capacity. Sites that have done the LED conversion often see kVA savings beat the lighting savings themselves.

Multi-pitch sites and separate meters

Grounds with multiple pitches, scoreboards, and ancillary buildings often have separate meters across the site. We pull them onto a single comparison so you can see whether consolidating onto one supplier beats keeping them split. For most multi-meter grounds, the volume discount makes consolidation the right answer. But not always. We show the numbers either way.

3G / 4G pitch and the new load profile

Artificial pitches with longer playing hours and more frequent floodlit sessions change the demand pattern. If you’re moving from grass to 3G/4G, the new contract needs to be sized for the extra evening hours. We’ll model expected growth and route to suppliers whose contracts handle that increase without break fees.

How a sports ground electricity switch works with us