What a 24/7 golf simulator bay really costs to power
For a lot of sim venues, the electric bill is the second biggest cost after rent. Most of it goes on hours when nobody's playing.
How much a bay uses
We work on about 350 kWh a month per bay as a typical figure: the sim PC, projector, screen, lighting and the bay's share of heating. When we metered our Poole venue in December 2025, the AV rack and air conditioning for its two bays came to about 285 kWh per bay, before lighting and other sockets. That's winter, when heating is at its highest. Your figure will depend on your kit, room size and how you heat it, but it's a sensible starting point.
At a unit rate of 25p per kWh, that's:
| Per bay | 4 bays | |
|---|---|---|
| A month | £87.50 | £350 |
| A year | £1,050 | £4,200 |
Check your own unit rate on your bill. Business tariffs vary a lot, and the sums scale in a straight line.
How much of that is empty hours?
A 24/7 venue is open 168 hours a week. Even a busy bay is only booked for part of that. If the bay stays on all the time, the empty hours cost almost as much as the booked ones.
Here's the share of that £87.50 going on empty hours, for a bay open 24/7:
| Booked hours a week | Hours empty | Spent on empty hours, per bay a month | A year, 4 bays |
|---|---|---|---|
| 40 | 76% | £66.67 | £3,200 |
| 60 | 64% | £56.25 | £2,700 |
| 80 | 52% | £45.83 | £2,200 |
We've spread the energy evenly across the hours. Bays draw a bit more while someone's playing, so treat these as upper estimates.
How to cut it
- Switch bays off when they're not booked. The biggest saving by far, and the only one that scales with your opening hours.
- Bring them back on before the booking, so projectors are warm and the room's comfortable when the customer walks in. Around 15 minutes for kit, longer for heating in winter.
- Never switch off mid-session. Power should follow the booking, with a safety check that the room's empty.
- Heat and cool to the booking too. Heating an empty room overnight is often the biggest single waste.
- Measure it. A smart meter or sub-meter per bay shows what you're actually saving. Guesses don't help when the bill lands.
Work it out for your venue
Put your bays, hours and unit rate into our savings calculator. It shows the energy you'd save alongside the staff time and refunds.
Power that follows your bookings
BAYi switches bays on before each booking and off after it, straight from your booking system. Book a 20-minute video demo to see it running at Bunkerbay.