New to Power Move- Any hints and tips?

Hi @Baker ,

This comment is the personal views of a Forum Volunteer, rather than official advice from OVO.

Based on what you’ve said, I would probably recommend that you withdraw from Power Move and just focus on Power Move Plus.

It’s not worth ruining your health over it - the idea is not to deprive yourself but to shift heavy usage. If you’re not comfortable with that, no-one will hold it against you if you choose step down.

Likewise, if attempting a Power Move and/or Power Move Plus challenge is proving detrimental to your health and/or wellbeing, please discontinue participation immediately. OVO has a duty of care to its customers and they do not want things like PM/PMP to affect your health and wellbeing - that comes first, always.

Thank you for your honest reply, I did wonder if when they designed this if they had taken everything into account in households.

I had thought it probably wasn't for me, yes I will drop out.

Have a wonderful 2024

Yes it is not aimed at people who use little electricity. It is aimed at high users to encourage them to MOVE their demand to off peak, clue is in the name. As a low energy user you'll never reach the target. 

I’m a low user myself with my average usage being less than 5kWh a day, but I’m able to pull off Power Move targets without too much trouble because I’m able to be flexible.

I’m also able to pull off 0.2kWh Power Move Plus targets by being smart with my usage - and this still allows me to run all my Ubiquiti UniFi kit, watch YouTube and do other stuff, just in a slightly different way. I just do my dinner slightly later in the day.

Hi Baker

You are in a similar situation to me but I have got my electric usage down to about 60p a day, I use one electric light at a time and during the power move period I use rechargeable Ledeak camping lights £14.99 for a 2 pack  from Amazon, I have sight issues but they are really good and bright and the battery on  my laptop and ipad. I am lucky that I cook on gas but I do reach my £15 target each month. Try not to use the kettle during the PM period, some others have said they fill a flask with hot water at 3.45. Keep trying

Hello @Baker, well done on winning the PowerPlus incentives.

The difference with the monthly Power Move incentive (confusingly, they sound very similar incentives!) is that it compares your peak hours (i.e. 4-7PM) with your overall weekday usage (bank holidays and weekends don’t count), one is a proportion of the other, which changes every few months: sometimes it’s 13.5%, from January to March it’s  between 11.5 and 14.5%.  But the key thing to remember is, that the incentive is based around the idea of your peak hours total consumption as a percentage of your weekday total consumption.  
 

As you've so rightly said, cutting down on, say, cooking and eating, during that 4-7 slot is difficult. If it’s possible to prepare food in advance and just quickly reheat to eat during 4-7, that’s one way around it, but as you say that’s not always to everyone’s tastes, or indeed possible for some.
 

But because Power Move is based on percentage of use in the weekday 4-7 period as compared with overall usage during the weekday, there are possibilities for you I think.  your average is fairly low at around 5kWh per day, so well done on that…but remember the Power Move incentive doesn’t care whether you’re a low user or a high user, it only cares about that crucial percentage figure. So although we might strive to reduce our overall consumption, Power Move won’t reward us for that, not at all. What it will reward us for is reducing the key 4-7 weekday slot when compared to the overall weekday consumption.  
 

I’m so sorry to labour that point, but it’s easy to assume with Power Move that it rewards us for lowering consumption overall, it doesn’t.  So, that said, move as much consumption as you can away from weekends (and bank holidays) into weekdays (NOT into the 4-7 slot, of course!), and very crucially, as you’ve intimated with reference to cooking etc., out of the weekday 4-7 slot and into any other weekday period. You work from home, so that’s an advantage in a way, shift as much of your 35 kWh average weekly electrical consumption as you can into the weekday non-4-7 slots, if I can put it as clumsily as that! Any weekday (except bank holidays).  
 

You don’t want to increase overall consumption, that would be counter-intuitive, just move stuff around as much as possible to make that weekday 4-7 slot LOOK GOOD when compared to the rest of your weekday usage. The constant “always on” stuff like ‘fridges, freezers, laptops, routers, some LED lighting, etc. etc. don’t impact that much on Power Move (unlike other initiatives like PowerPlus) as they don’t militate against that crucial percentage figure. There’s been lots of discussion on here about heating costs, as that is one cost that is likely to be higher 4-7 than during the hours when we’re asleep! Again, working from home is a slight advantage for you, from a percentage viewpoint, but nobody is advising you to sit in the cold and dark during 4-7, least of all OVO, and definitely none of us consumers on here advocate it! 
 

So, don’t lose heart, at 5 kWh average per day, admirably low as that is, you have lots of wiggle room to reduce the 3-hour weekday peak hours slot to the required 600 Watt hours or so: 200 Wh for each of the three 4-7 hours allows scope for lighting, heating, TV etc etc., maybe including some judicious microwaving if you really monitor things carefully.  There’s lots of really good really specific advice from consumers here on how they’re hitting (or sometimes not quite reaching) the Power Move challenge.  
 

Very good luck to you, let us know how you get on over the next few days, remember to monitor scrupulously your half-hourly usage figures in your online OVO Account every day or so.

@Baker and others, I’m such a slow typist, there’ve been so many replies while I was labouring over a hot keyboard! 
 

Power Move is for low users as well, as @Blastoise186 says, it just requires cunning and flexibility! I’m in the low use category myself, even lower than you, and I hit the target OK, but my wife and I are retired so there is a lot of flexibility there. It would be a shame if you pulled out of Power Move, 15 quid a month pays the iniquitous standing charge for electricity for the entire month, or, put another way, pays for about 10 days’ worth of electricity for your household, at 5kWh a day? And @Sally123, what a phenomenally low usage that is at 60p a day…

But it most definitely is NOT worth losing sleep over or making ourselves anxious over, life is to be enjoyed after all without giving ourselves even more headaches than are out there already!  Have a wonderful 2024 yourself, all the very best…

Anyone who can’t meet the target without sitting in the dark and not eating properly, should follow Blatoise’s original advice and forget about Power Move.  In your case the amount of electricity involved isn’t going to make much difference to the grid in any case.

I seem to manage the hour slots. But not when it’s for the month they say l could reach it .Their is two of us. l try cutting down by doing washing at different times so it’s not on after four. out of peak times. cooking is later as we are used to eating later.l work to six at moment.