Power Move and EVs- How can I hit the target?

Can you just plug the EV in after 7pm? I'm not familiar with the system you mentioned so am I missing something?

My thinking here would be the same as Sparky64. Just plug the EV in after 7pm so it avoids charging during 4-7pm. Perhaps one day the generators, grid, electricity companies and others in the supply chain will all come together on energy use thinking. Until then the easiest answers is to unplug or not plug in as much as possible during the Power Move events.

Simply block out the 4.00pm to 7.00 pm slot in your car charging schedule. Works fine for me. Even if you plug in before 4.00 pm and it starts charging it will go on hold from 4.00 and start again after 7.00. Best of both worlds.

I don’t have an EV but I agree it would be a no-brainer for OVO to change the ‘charge anytime’ option to ‘charge outside power move times’ ie outside of the 4-7 time slot even if 4-7 shows up as a green time. 
Meanwhile couldn’t you simply just plug it in after 7 as Sparky64 suggested?

You can. Habit is that we plug it in before we go in the house. If we don’t we can forget which limits range the next day. Given that the service automates charging schedules, simply including this seems a simple win for lots of people.

It would be interesting to see what nationwide EV charging data looks like for Ovo and how much this could assist with balancing grid demand.

I got email this morning to say l was doing well l have earned £3 towards my energy bill next time. don’t know how l managed that but must have use less appliances at different times so it must work it’s the first time it’s happened. and their is two of us here.

We have always met the power move target and we have our tesla plugged in but not set to charge during 4-7 hours. The wife's car and she looks after the charging so it's totally doable not to charge between 4-7 even if the cars plugged in. 

My opinion, for what it is worth, is this.

I don’t think the charge Anytime product is totally about being green. I might be right in saying that it’s a product designed to capture a slice of the EV charging market with a very competitive rate based on the principle that the more energy you sell the more turnover and profit the you can make. The bigger corporate game is that you either grow bigger or you eventually get bought out or go out of business.

The product is also driven by Kaluza that is able to schedule charging to make it as green as possible given that people ultimately like flexibility and reliability so perhaps green has to be sacrificed a bit to attract customers. It could be that Kaluza is also able to schedule local charging to minimise excessively high local loading. I don’t know if Ovo get a discount on transmission charges (or conversely don’t get penalised) if they can demonstrate that they can actively manage the distribution of power on a local basis to prevent overloading. In that sense, by distributing the load over a period of time, the losses in a particular distribution system is reduced. In that sense the result is ‘greener’. This is because the losses in a distribution system are proportional to the square of the current. As an example if you have a system where you have twice the current for half the time (the same power being delivered) you double the distribution losses compared to a steady current for the whole time.

I don’t think trying to second guess the system by plugging in after 7pm is going to be significantly greener. What you are doing is slightly restricting the times when the car can be charged which may result in a higher local power demand and being less green in terms if distribution losses than it could be otherwise. Who knows? Perhaps someone who knows how Kaluza works in practice can shed some light.

I’m an EV owner who looked at using the Charge Anytime product but neither my car nor charging equipment is compatible. For the time being I can use the EV charging to easily meet the Power Move targets (I normally achieve 7-8%) and the discount is very useful. However, in the longer term I’m looking at other ways of reducing my unit cost by using my ability to be ‘Agile’.

I have a tip with EV and Power Move. This month they say we are not reaching our goal so far. In previous months we have smashed it under 10%.

This is what we have discovered all January we charged our car during the week before 4pm or after 7pm. Got our £15. However this month looking at usage spikes which were charging periods we have charged the car on Saturday or Sunday. Never even considered that before. The next couple of weeks we hope to claw it back from 14.69% that we currently stand at to within the range to get our £15.

So to get the most out of it charge your car during the week off peak

I think it was mentioned a while back related to non-EV energy use but definitely worth repeating the advice. I hope you reach your target.

We charged our car during the week off peak for the rest of the month and got it down to an amazing 8.7%. We got our £15. It’s worth that little bit of planning

@AussieDawno It is so good to see a positive comment from someone who ‘gets it’. Like you I have an EV and normally get somewhere in the range 7-9%. Obviously charging an EV out of the peak is a no brainer but when your electricity bill comes out to about £1,200 a year it is good to get a bit of a discount on the bill for making the effort.