Everyone wants to add “premium” revenue to their RV and boat storage facility. But most premium add-ons are just marketing words duct-taped onto the same dirt and fence.
Power is different.
If you offer trickle charge (or low-amp power) at scale, you’re not just upselling — you’re manufacturing net operating income (NOI). And unlike fancy paint or a new sign posted at your RV and boat storage facility, NOI is the one thing the market consistently rewards.
The Economics (Why This Is Worth Talking About)
Adding power at a toy storage site can cost real money. In fact, $200k to $300k isn’t crazy once you factor in trenching, conduit, pedestals, wiring, panel capacity and the “surprise” scope creep that always shows up the week after you think you’re done.
But the revenue math can be surprisingly clean.
If a facility can charge $20-$30/month for power and you have 400 units, you’re talking about $8,000-$12,000/month in incremental revenue if everyone takes it (or a meaningful portion does). Even at partial adoption, that’s still material NOI.
At a 6% cap rate, incremental NOI has a multiplier effect. This is how a utility feature turns into real valuation lift — not in theory, but on the trailing twelve when you sell or refinance.
The catch: Every market is different. This is not a one-size-fits-all product.
Some markets are absolutely power-hungry — customers store expensive rigs, have onboard batteries, want to keep fridges stable, keep monitoring devices live or just hate dead batteries when they show up on a Friday night.
Other markets are more price sensitive and would rather save $25/month and buy a $99 battery jumper once a year.
So the move isn’t “do it everywhere.” The move is “build the option and let demand prove itself.”
Best play: Phase it, but design for full buildout.
The Smartest Strategy: Phase Electrification
- Phase 1 — Add powered stalls closer to the service and most visible/high-demand rows.
- Phase 2 — Expand only if the market absorbs it, and only where the return on investment (ROI) holds.
But here’s the part most people miss: Even if you’re only building Phase 1, you should install conduit during initial site construction for future expansion.
Conduit is cheap insurance.
You’re already trenching the site. You already have equipment mobilized. You already have open ground. Adding conduit while the site is torn up is a rounding error compared to doing it later when you’re cutting asphalt, patching and playing “guess where the utilities are” with your civil contractor.
Don’t make the most expensive version of the decision later.
The Other Critical Detail: Size the Electrical Backbone for the Future
If you think you’ll expand power later, size your infrastructure like you mean it. Specifically, make sure your main service and panel are sized for future buildout.
Nothing stings like installing a 400A panel, proving demand exists and then realizing you need to rip and replace with 600A a year later because you boxed yourself in. That’s not a “learning experience.” That’s just paying twice.
Panel capacity, spare breakers, transformer coordination, utility lead times — all of it needs to be thought through upfront, even if you’re only energizing a portion of stalls on day one.
How To Pitch It Internally
If you’re an owner-operator, this isn’t a luxury upgrade. It’s an optionality upgrade. You’re buying the right to scale premium revenue when the market supports it.
If you’re developing, it’s a positioning play. Powered stalls are a differentiator that your competitor without conduit can’t “catch up” to cheaply.
And if you’re looking at exit value, it’s one of the cleanest stories you can tell a buyer: proven add-on adoption, clean billing, incremental NOI, expandable infrastructure.
Bottom Line
Power can be a high-ROI feature, but only if you treat it like a product with phased rollout, not a gamble you hard-build across the whole site.
Phase the pedestals. Oversize the backbone. Lay conduit while the site is open.
That’s how you turn a $200k-$300k line item into a valuation lever.
With nearly 20 years of experience in commercial real estate, Chris Koenig is a highly valued member of the Toy Storage Nation Advisory Board, known as a progressive RV and boat storage developer, operator and consultant. Chris is a huge advocate of Class A design and a pioneer in solar canopy design. He has lent his expertise to numerous successful projects and is always willing to share his experiences with fellow developers, investors, and operators via content on toystoragenation.com as well as his social media channels, Medium and email.
