Are you making use of weekends by any chance?

Yes we are. I think we have understood this fully

It’s 100% a con, I was always hitting the maximum and then they kept changing the requirements. I live on my own and am very strict with my usage in the peak hours and barely earn £6. I renewed my contract with them for 2 years because I liked the power move initiative and it’s now pointless. 

They aslo anger me because when they take my direct debit at the start of the month it puts me nearly £600 in credit. I am supposed to have a credit electricity account, yet they are taking hundereds of pounds of me as a pensioner living on £15,000 a year as interest free loans. I need to find a more ethical supplier, but I’m not sure it exists! 

Hi @Nick in Worcester  I understand your frustration. I have excelled in every other power move but this one, no! I don't believe Ovo would con us but I just don't know how to make this one work - so am binning it this month :(  …..and having my dinner exactly at the time I want :)   

I did everything I could  - only background elec (fridge, freezer, ok, and TV but that really is it) 6 - 9; all higher usage appliances (washing machine, cooking, kettle, hoover, lawn mower etc etc) out of peak time and / or on weekends and I still didn't make the £2 (which tbh, even if I had, I would have questioned if it was worth it - I do not want to eat at 5.55 every night and certainly not after 9.05!) 

First time I’ve missed the max since the start of Power Move… 6.53% missed by 0.03 - £5 not £10 - literally just using base power between 6-9pm - I’m of the opinion it’s not possible to hit this target unless there are more than 8 weekend days in the month. OVO must be desperate to save on the scheme. Will see what happens in Autumn challenge if it’s not back to £15 pm and a realistic target I’m OUT! 

Yeah, I agree. I’m binning it so we can live our lives normally. I’m horrified to hear you didn’t even make to £2. That is terrible. You clearly did the same as me!

Totally possible we used just 3.73% in peak hours this month. June we used 5.5% so that was before weekends were taken in to account but the threshold was higher. Thought it would be a bit of a struggle but we have done nothing different, I always do the laundry at the weekend anyway which never counted before. Dishwasher is never on at peak time and our EV is never charged peak time but is quite often charged at weekends which wasnt counted before.  There's normally at least me or my wife working from home a few days a week and we're done by 4'ish so that's extra power used during off peak, laptops, screens etc. Focus on using MORE off peak to reduce the proportion of peak useage, this is the key. It's all about keeping generation as low as possible at peak times to help generation and grid capacity it's NOT an environmental scheme total usage is nothing to do with it. You can be a really high user, we're quite high as we have an EV, and you'll make the target where as a low user won't it's all about the ratio of peak compared to off peak use. 

In the end it’s a choice. OVO would never ask anyone to make their lives impossible or even dangerous to achieve the targets. Some people, like myself, have an EV and they can charge out of the peak and this makes reaching the target a lot easier. However, you would also not want to be paying my electricity bill.

Proportionately, households using a small amount of power a month do much better than heavy users like me but find it much more difficult to meet the target. A few pounds off of my bill is hardly noticeable. A few pounds off a light user’s bill is probably quite significant. All OVO are asking you to do is to make an effort not to use peak time electricity and if you succeed then you are rewarded. It’s not a con as some users manage ok and we all have to meet the same targets. I will also be looking forward to going back to the same rewards that we had last winter.

Peter

Spot on! 

I am sure it isn’t a con as such but the target levels are completely impossible to meet if you are a low electricity user. When the target were higher the only reason we got any reward was because we doubled our electricity consumption by using the immersion to heat the water tank during off peak hours. The problem is though that with kerosene at 56p per litre it is way more expensive to use the immersion heater than it is to have the oil boiler heat the water. The immersion puts up the electricity consumption by nearly 6kWh per day but the boiler only uses about one litre of kerosene to do the say job. In fact it does more because we heat the water to a lower temperature when using the immersion. 
 

We have given up trying to reduce consumption during the peak hours now. The dishwasher goes on whenever now rather than after peak and the oven gets used whenever the cooking lady wants to cook something irrespective. But our daily electricity consumption was an average of 5.08 kWH per day in July. So relatively low. Salad days I suppose do help. In June when the immersion programmer was on the average was 10.78 kWh per day.

No, it's not a con.  It's difficult to achieve but I've always hit the £10 jackpot !!!  The secret is, and a lot of people will disagree and say it's bad for your fridge and whatnot, but I turn off everything except the barest necessities at the electrical mains.  It knocked usage down to .02 kw every 30 minutes between 6 & 9 pm !!!!  To each their own.  I've hit the £10 target every month since this began !!!

Any opinions on Power Move? I've just had an email from OVO saying that I haven't reached my goal of 8%. (for July).As I saw people say somewhere else, I live alone, don't use anything other than lighting and the TV in the evenings, and don't see how I can reduce my usage any further.

I'd also like to know what OVO have to say. Has anyone asked them?

@Middlestreet In your case using kerosene is much more economic than using the immersion heater but doesn’t leave you any room for manoeuvre in trying to offset your in-peak usage with somewhat more out-of-peak usage with the immersion heater. Sometimes it’s a no win situation. Running an immersion heater on a standard tariff is not cheap. The only possible solution is to use the immersion heater just enough out of the peak to get the reward but the reward isn’t big enough in the summer to make it pay. It might not even pay with the £15 reward in the winter.

Peter

I used 2.86% this month and cooked with electric oven, infact, I have 2 ovens and the hob on just now for dinner. I also have a teenager whose Xbox is not off at all during peak times

I do batch cook at weekends but this is for ease after work but helps. 

I agree with previous comments, it is to do with your overall house consumption compared with your usage during peak hours.

I have a larger house and a DIY mad hubby (not forgetting teenager) so our usage is higher. By using all our electric guzzling appliances etc outwith peak hours it offsets against peak hours

Go into the app and reduce your direct debit and/or ask for a refund.

It’s not a con but if you don’t use much power it’s difficult.  We used to hit the middle band regularly when weekends weren’t counting but now they are and the % is lower we will need to be much more pro active and not sure it’s worth the effort 

Yeah I think we try to use less anyway, so the percentage is difficult. If you are big users then you can probably make this work

Interesting comments but I agree with those who are struggling to reach the target.  How do they assess your initial consumption and decide on what you need to save?  I don’t have a dishwasher, I do not use my tumble drier, I use the washing machine in the morning, we eat our main meal midday and tea is often not a cooked one (but I do have a gas hob)!  All the ideas are great but why should I, and others, have to struggle each day, doing weird things to keep food warm, cook, and other essentials.  Now that the nights are drawing in it is going to be even harder - we watch tv with one table lamp on!  I have decided it is not worth the effort for 38p, my last reward!  I want to live a hassle free life not one where I am constantly watching what I am using and cutting corners. YES IT IS A CON!

I have done this before and they always skew it towards me having paid my bills in advance. They tell me they are setting the payment correctly so I pay over the year, but this is a total lie, They set it so I have always paid in advance and lent them loads of money. I will try what you said though. Thank you

Without wanting to get into a tussle over this (it’s not worth it) but it leads on to another subject which is worth mentioning.

Definition Con: (noun) An instance of deceiving or tricking someone.

There is no deception by OVO or OVO attempting to trick anyone as the rules for getting the reward is laid out in clear terms. When people seem to be saying is that its a con perhaps from the realisation that it is quite difficult, as a low user of electricity, to achieve the target YET other people are getting the reward (by managing to adapt their usage) so why am I missing out? It must be a con. Not everyone is in the position to be able to change their pattern of electricity usage around peak usage. Sometimes you are in a position to do something like this sometimes you’re not.

Here’s something to think about. If electricity were half price outside of the peak hours how much effort would you make not to use electricity in the peak? This is not a hypothetical situation because in the future there will be a move towards flexible and dynamic pricing and you can find any number of articles on the internet talking about this. Cutting peak demand is going to be essential in the future to reduce carbon emissions because during the peak the most expensive and polluting power stations are brought on line. Some companies already operate the model of expensive peak / cheap off peak and it’s surprising how it concentrates the mind regarding using peak time electricity.

Peter

Yes Nick, It is a total con in line with many of OVO’s promises. They claim that my Smart Meter isn’t working at their end ( it has never worked at my end!) and they can’t evaluate my Power Move for July….oddly, checking my online account, I can see the usage for every day. I guess the answer is to make all your power demands right in the middle of the power save window - seems it’s not going to affect the bill.

So far I think I’ve hit every power move target by the maximum. I was getting the £15 & now I’m getting the £10. I’m a low user anyway, & in the summer I’m an even lower user as I have solar panels with battery storage so most of the day when the sun is shining it’s powering everything I use & in the evening the battery kicks in. So actually it’s quite hard to show that I’m using less power in peak times. 
What I do though is to make sure that when I do any cooking, I do it in bulk & either freeze portions or pop them in the fridge for another day. That way if I’ve had to cook in peak time at least I’m effectively halving or thirding the power I’d use. Mostly I try to cook out of peak times though, & now weekends are OK to use I do a few batches at the weekend, & also do my washing then if the weather’s good for hanging outside on the line. 
I also make one big pot of tea out of peak time & pop it into a flask to drink in the evening. 
The tv doesn’t go on in peak times (is there actually anything worth watching?). If I want to watch catch up I watch it on my laptop that I’ve charged during non-peak times. I honestly don’t think I’m missing out on anything.
All in all I’m very pleased with power move because the £10 is actually a sizeable chunk off my bill. It can take a little bit of thought to get a routine going especially when peak times change but once in the groove it’s ok.  

All that hard work’s no good if they say they can’t read your Smart Meter though.

I’ve hit the top tier of the target every time but this month my peak usage is 15 percent. 

Is it a con?  No.