Hi ​@HJRea ,

My understanding is that both will be excluded completely. You can use as much as you want on those two days without impacting PM.

Hi ​@HJRea 

I have my own nerdy spreadsheet as well and that is a good question and a good answer to go with it. Hope you have a great time over Christmas.

From Power Move FAQs | OVO:

Electricity used on an English bank holiday won’t count towards your monthly use.

From UK bank holidays - GOV.UK:
  

Upcoming bank holidays in England and Wales

2024

2025

Thanks ​@Firedog I believe it also applies to Scottish bank holidays as I’m in Scotland - so we’ll get 2nd January too. 

​@HJRea I hadn't even though about regional variations so I would have given the same response as ​@Blastoise186 and ​@Firedog . I wonder if that just modifies the calculation for customers in that region or everybody. It just shows that even a seemingly simple question can be tricky to answer.

I wouldn’t bank on that. Did you check the FAQ? The current challenge ends on 31 December unless it’s prolonged, so all bets are off.

Tomorrow (2 December, in lieu of St Andrew’s Day) is a bank holiday in Scotland - would you expect that to be excluded from the calculation? (I wouldn’t, but you could put it to the test by leaving a 2kW fan heater on from 4 to 7 PM, then see what happens to your percentage. Don’t blame me if you try this and then miss out on your reward .)

Hmm, I guess they have changed the rules from last year. If I recall correctly we did get 2 Jan last year, but you are right, not St Andrews Day. In practice more people are likely to be off work on the 2 Jan then St Andrew’s day, thus resulting in differing power demands. 

Last year, bank holidays counted as offpeak just like weekend days. The change earlier this year was simply to exclude bank holidays from the calculation altogether. It would be unfair on the great majority of punters if Scots got nine free passes to everyone else’s eight, so I don’t expect the ‘English bank holidays’ rule to change for next quarter. I’m quite prepared to be surprised, though.

As a low user I'm actually wishing the two christmas days ARE included but treated as a weekend (no time restrictions of 4 - 7pm). With all the cooking I will be doing those two days it would help to increase my off peak percentage so that I can reach the less than 8% band. I did an early christmas dinner for 12 two weeks ago so lots of weekend cooking and it's the first time I've got under 8% but it's slowly creeping up again. If christmas day isn't included at all I can't see my percentage staying below 8%. I know, you can't please everyone all of the time, but treating bank holidays like weekends makes more sense to me.

Hi ​@Belinda5 ,

They’re considered Bank Holidays so are totally excluded. However, you’ve still got a chance at a reward anyway - 8% isn’t the only goal!

What are you going to miss out on if you don’t hit the target? If you think you’d be £10 worse off because of the new rule, you may be able to bring that figure down by increasing your offpeak usage on the days when it does count. You’d have to do your sums, but £10 buys ~40 kWh of electricity. That’s a lot of heating or cooking or electric showers. 

Cook what you can during off-peak today - I’ve just done a large fruit cake this morning.

You could cook your turkey or whatever joint you are having today and have it cold or reheated tomorrow. (I’ll be cooking mine sometime after 7 tonight).
Same with potatoes and veg, parboil them today and finish them off by boiling, or roasting, or air frying tomorrow.

It will also save you time cooking tomorrow.

​@Belinda5 All good advice from the people who know. Have a carefree Christmas Day and Boxing Day and that will help towards you achieving your target. As ​@Nukecad has said, on other days you can prepare outside of the peak but take care with food safety with keeping things chilled where necessary. Have a good Christmas break.

Peter