Top tips and tricks with OVO Energy Tracker

In Greenlight, does "Your energy’s yearly carbon footprint" figure change if you use a higher proportion of your energy when the carbon intensity of the grid is low?

Am not sure how dynamic the carbon figure is. 

Sorry to say @Tim_OVO but Greenlight hasn’t changed for me ! I answered Yes to Electric water heater and still have all my (very small) gas usage logged as Water Heating.

The only week that my gas usage is all Cooking (which is all it ever is) was the week I was on holiday and used no gas at all. Unfortunately the Usage graph tells me I used 2 days worth while I was still away !!

It’s a bit of a first world problem, but if it’s going to tell me something it ought to be correct !

Agreed. My wife gets frustrated at the spreadsheets I create before any purchase, trying to get comparable data off each manufacturer's Web site. 

Very different. I forgot the Solar PV which reduces our summer use. We are both retired since March 2020, and both use phone, tablet and computer very regularly. Our electricity usage hasn't changed significantly; if anything it has been lower this year! 

I was amazed at the low "average" electricity usage. Perhaps many are like my neighbour who has a TV and radio as her only technology, and a clothes washing machine but no dishwasher. 

Thanks @juliamc - the Carbon Insights team love hearing this and have said feedback is always helpful in improving how they can estimate and show visualize your usage. 

With your most recent feedback specifically, they’re going to adjust the calculations to work better for people with electric heating.

@EverythingNeedsAUserName my household of 4 is sadly well above the average OVO home on gas usage. Leaving lights on in empty rooms prompted me to post this earlier in the year: 

• Living in a house share? Should you have conversations about saving energy? Blog

Maybe it’s time for another chat...

Interesting that Greenlight thinks we put the heating on?

A bit too early in the year for us. How many have had heating on yet? 

Just to add to my previous post.

The gas heating split is a bit strange as the gas condensing system boiler only comes on once overnight to heat up the water in the tank for a short time.

So it is unlikely to be heating but could be i guess in some homes? Perhaps something to think about with Greenlight? Also are you realistically going to ever use just 7kw of heating in a week? 

Very infrequently the boiler doesn't kick in if the water is still hot enough from the previous day.

My chart of gas use tells me it’s mostly going to Water Heating - my only use of gas now is for the hob ! I think it’s a bug...

Well spotted, @Jeffus.

As @juliamc has mentioned these consumption breakdowns aren’t 100% accurate. The algorithms make judgements on what’s using the energy based on patterns of usage, but it doesn’t always get things right. We’ve forwarded your feedback on to the team as it’s really helpful for them to identify issues and make improvements to how consumption is identified in future.

Keep up the constructive feedback team! 

Nothing against heating for last week

Nothing against heating in Greenlight for last week. 

I did notice that there was something against electric water heating but we don't have anything like that (kettles are another category). I guess electric showers are quite common? Ours run of the hot water tank via a pump. 

Interesting observation, @Jeffus - am I right in thinking there’s no option to specify whether you have an electric shower?

I’ve once again passed this one back to the Greenlights team so hopefully they’ll be able to use this to make future improvements. 

Perhaps add to this?

My observation for this week. 

One of the tips is about cooking with gas... but we don't cook with gas... and ovo know that. 

We did use our slow cooker to batch cook up some chicken, apple, celery, pepper and onions yesterday. It usually just stays in the cupboard so lets see if this becomes a regular thing again. 

Well spotted in terms of the gas-based advice, @Jeffus .

I’d argue that even if you’re cooking with electric, batch cooking is still a top-tip in terms of energy-efficient catering, although I’m gonna check this one with the team to see if they’ve got equivalent figures for electric oven owners.

Love that you’ve dusted off the slow-cooker, nothing like a good autumnal slow-cooked stew!   Keep us posted with how this habit-change goes (always on the look out for any good veggie stew recipes too, if you’ve got a fave?  ) 

We don’t have a dryer, nor a dishwasher, our washing machine packed up in the first week of lockdown and I haven’t been able to replace it. Our cooker doesn’t use electricity. I’ve tried putting the fridge on a timer so it doesn’t run for half of the 4-7pm peak period but I keep finding its totally defrosted, water everywhere and food spoiled. I’m at a loss to think of other ways to use less electricity but my kids are sick of not being allowed to put the lights or their computers on, not do any homework in those hours and I’m sure it’s costing more overall charging up rechargeables outside of 4-7pm, so we have battery lights around the house and a projector running from a powerpack….not to mention the damage being done to their eyes in the half light.

I’ve been taking in unwanted and rescued animals for 50+ years so I’m not prepared to get rid of our fishtank or vivarium (whose heaters are turned off in the warmer months anyway). Even the pest repellent plugs are switched off in those hours, we’re that desperate, but are paying the price for that now as its the time of year when they start looking for warmer homes so come indoors and they have.

We already have a smart meter. We agreed to trial one early on so have had it since they were first introduced.

We can’t have solar panels, have been surveyed several times, as there’s not enough roof facing the right direction.

Has anyone any other ideas for cutbacks?

We also have the looming disaster of an EV charger to be fitted soon. We ordered an EV on lease months ago, trying to do the responsible thing. I’ve been driving hundreds of miles around the local towns to look for places to charge it for free but all supermarkets are charging now. Its taken so long to get the house fuse changed that we cannot now apply for an EV drive account...so our bills are about to treble :O

Hi @shazreeves and thanks for sharing this. For some reason the post ended up in our archive section, I’ve moved it over to the ‘my account’ category.

Are you part of the Power Move trial? If you are, we have a private group set up for you to get tips on how to hit your 12.5% target. Request to join this here. I have a feeling it will be easier to hit your target once you ensure EV charging during the off peak midweek periods!