Power Move Missing Data

Exactly the same for me, and last month as well.  Data for 1st of the month claimed to be missing, but present in usage.

​@Ian in Somerset I think I had the same last month also but thought it may have been because I only joined Power move on 2 October.   Perhaps 1 November is in my last month calculation ??

Just checked the app, exactly the same 1 Nov "black bar"

Ian and Duncan. Perhaps I can shine some light on this anomaly...though it’s only an assumption. Different apps take readings at different times of the day and different days. On the V2G trial there is no app which does all the readings I want and so I have to research up to 5 different locations.

If you look at the National Grid they cannot give you a reading for Noon because “Noon” doesn’t always occur at 12.00GMT (1.00pm BST). Sometimes it’s minutes earlier, sometimes minutes later so they will always give the info for Noon at 1.00pm GMT (2.00pm BST). I can only assume that this has a knock on effect at Midnight as well…..though that’s just a guess. As for when information is recorded, some apps give you the information at the end of the day and others at the beginning. Hence on one app it may show a meter reading which is the same on that day yet be the same at the start of the next day. One reading for two days. It plays havoc when you think things are regular but then one App jumps from one day to two days out.. Until OVO manage to put all the relevant information in one app you will always get people giving dissimilar data.

Talking of data...an example of getting information we thought was accurate but wasn’t, take that recorded by The Sir John Radcliffe Observatory at Oxford of minimum and maximum temperatures per day. The Met Office will tell you the earliest official data recorded was in 1853...but Oxford and Armagh Universities have records taken twice a day dating back to the 1790’s and when you look at the data for the 1820’s when readings were meant to be taken twice a day, all looks normal….until you make an accidental calculation and then it hits you in the face like a brick that only one reading was taken a day and the other is invented. This affects data over a 2 year period. Just looking at the numbers it’s impossible to see it on face value….but look at the maximum and minimum temperatures over years and decades and it suddenly becomes obvious.

The difference between the two over the years is all over the place, sometimes just a couple of degrees difference and others tens of degrees apart. Of course it doesn’t help when the temperatures were recorded in Fahrenheit and converted to Centigrade….then about 1960 averaged up. But for a two year period in the 1820’s the difference give or take half a degree is 8°C….for 8 months continuously on one occasion, every single day. Compare that with the other years over the century and there are sometimes no similar measurements for 2-3 years, others just 3 in a year. There is only one way this could occur...if someone only takes one measurement per day then adds (or subtracts) 8° with an odd random variation of a degree so as not to raise suspicion.

Compare that now to the present day with OVO giving contradicting information on different apps and we begin to question….which data is the correct data? Is it the one from the day before or the one from the day after? The only way to do away with ambiguity is for everyone to take the data reading at the same time and present it in the same way….but that’s too simple.

Oh and just to throw another thing forward, October has 31 days but September and November only 30...plus in October we lost an hour when the clocks went back and we changed from BST to GMT….So one day will have 25 hours not 24.

I see this, too.

The first of the month, and especially if it’s also the first day in a quarter, like 1 October, is a very busy day for the nuts-and-bolts bits of electricity supply. Millions of not-so-smart customers will be submitting monthly readings, and many - perhaps most - of OVO’s customers’ bills will be being closed and new bills opened. It seems a sensible decision not to try and retrieve data for a minority interest when others are hogging bandwidth. 

It won’t usually matter much - there only have to be a certain minimum number of ‘days with data’ for the month to result in a lot of points. 

​@Leo Moran I would be interested to know how  “Noon” doesn’t always occur at 12.00GMT (1.00pm BST). Sometimes it’s minutes earlier, sometimes minutes later.  Is National Grid on sidereal time ?

​@Firedog Are you saying that it doesn’t matter if the figures are all there as long as there is enough for points to be gained ?  In other words, don’t worry about missing data because the whole thing isn’t accurate anyway.

As regards the times: SMETS2 meters have a clock which is set on installation. Thereafter, it relies on the supply frequency to keep the clock accurate simply by counting cycles and advancing the clock by one second if necessary every 50 cycles. It may get a bit out of line over a period, but there are limits which will trigger an alert to the supplier, who should restore the correct time*. During a power cut, internal batteries keep the clock ticking over by an ordinary oscillating crystal method. This is all explained in the SMETS.

Power Move depends on half-hourly usage figures; these are stored by every SMETS2 meter for over a year and each day’s data are normally retrieved by the supplier the following day. Each half-hour’s usage is recorded with the time stamp of when it was recorded, always in UTC.

 ​@DuncanL All I’m saying is that missing a day or two’s usage figures won’t affect your ability to earn points, although the actual result may be a bit different from what it would have been had the missing data been available. However, there’s no knowing whether the result would have been better or worse - the difference is entirely random and so as fair as could be.

* I once measured a difference of about 25 seconds between the minute change on an MSF-controlled clock and on the IHD. I didn’t do anything about it, and the difference had reduced to less than 5 seconds a few days later. If there’s an HV electrical engineer around, he could probably explain why the frequency varies - it may have to do with the relative input from rotating machinery (e.g. gas turbines) and other sources (e.g. solar PV arrays).

Data missing for a weekday may not have that much of an effect on monthly average but missing a Saturday or Sunday, which are 100%off peak days, could well make a significant difference.