Power Move - new challenge information and changes to Power Move

I think the £10 reward will also be available one final time in April and May too if memory serves. If you trigger it for those two months, it should come through but after that it’ll be turned off.

Just as an excercise and indication I went back through my PM spreadsheets and recalculated for the last few months with the peak hours as being 5-7.

That brought the percentages for those months down from between 5.5%-6.5% to between 3.5% and 4%.

Fair enough I haven't really been trying that hard recently, boiling the odd kettle and even cooking the odd fish and chips during peak, so a bit more care will be needed if I'm to bring that down below 2%.
I should/may be able to do it, but for a light user like myself there isn't a lot of non-background peak use left to move now.

Another thing I haven’t seen anyone mention, is that the £2000 top prize, is actually maximum £2000. So if you’re a low user, the way I’m reading it, it will be significantly less, depending on your actual annual usage. I might be wrong, the information given on this point doesn’t make it absolutely clear in my opinion. 

Yes the information is a bit vague about if you use less than £2k isn’t it?

I’d expect that it will be a straight £2k, paid as a monthly credit - if only because that’s much easier to do - but I’ll ask the Power Move team if they can clairfy that point.

​@ima and others interested.

The PM team have confirmed that the prize is a flat total of £2,000 credit against your usage.

Whether you actually use more or less than £2k in a year it makes no difference - the prize is £2k credit however long that £2k lasts you.

(It just sounds better saying “1-year Free”).

They do agree that it could be clearer in the T&Cs.

Many thanks for the clarification!

It also looks like the prizes could change over time. They could remain as cash, they could be free stuff… Who knows… Could be anything really. I’m certainly curious as to what might come later.

I am not sure whether the £1.6m paid out for Power move is verified but if we assume this to be true for now and we look at the profit stats for OVO (quick google search using AI see below). Ovo has been consistently making a decent profit over the years apart from 2022 when prices exploded. I imagine a lot of people were on fixed tarriffs then that caused many smaller suppliers to go under and hence the loss in 2022 for OVO as well. I also imagine that is why our standing charges have quadrupled to make up for these past losses. Because of course OFGEM don’t actually show us what exactly makes up the price cap they set.

Whilst the profit number isn’t yet available for 2024, If we take £1.6m paid out for PM from 2023 profit of £817m this is just under 0.2% of the profit made. Not really a hardship for the small number of billionaires / corporates that own the company.

I always considered Power Move as both a way of reducing stress on the grid in turn helping the environment + Rewarding Ovo customers for being with them, by sharing a tiny amount of their profit. (Not a get rich quick scheme!)

Many of us are struggling with paying bills these days and we don’t all qualify as vulnerable. This small token of money just helps each month.

As I said before I am a conscientious low energy user and my combined gas/electric monthly bills are between £35 in summer and £70 in winter. I will continue to use my heavy appliances outside the peak times for environmental reasons but will be shopping around when my fixed tarriff ends.

AI Overview

OVO Energy is a UK-based energy supplier that provides electricity and gas to its customers. It became one of the Big Six energy suppliers in the UK in 2020. 

OVO Energy's annual profit has increased over the years, with a profit of £817 million in 2023. This compares to a loss of £1.2 billion in 2022. 

• In 2013, OVO Energy's gross profit was £18.5 million. 

• In 2017, OVO Energy's gross profit was around £125 million. 

• In 2022, OVO Energy generated over £5 billion in revenue. 

• In 2023, OVO Energy posted a profit of £817 million. 

Just worth remembering that Revenue != Profit and Gross Profit != Net Profit. It’s ultimately only the Net Profit that counts if you want to calculate how much a company actually made after it paid the taxman and all the other bills off.

It appears that the tool you used may have hallucinated (suggesting an older ChatGPT model) and served up incorrect information. That’s all I wish to mention here.

Don’t wanna dig too deep into this, but fixed rate tariffs are arguably slightly more profitable because the supplier can lock in the upstream rates for the entire contract period too, which makes their own costs more predictable. IIRC the SoLR stuff from 2021/22 will drop off of Standing Charges sooner or later if it hasn’t already.

Power Move rewards have always been intended more as an incentive to take part than anything else. Ultimately, it does seem as if many folks won’t be motivated to take part in basically anything that challenges them unless the possibility of winning/earning money is involved - it’s well researched stuff and is arguably the sole reason for the monetary rewards existing in the first place. Gamification is a powerful tool when used in the right way, you’d be surprised just how powerful it is.

FWIW tons of folks went mad when the National Lottery increased the balls in the lottery draw machines from 49 → 59 because it massively reduced the chances of winning. Still, chucking the extra 10 balls into their fancy washing machines doesn’t stop millions of people playing it every week!

This comment was edited because I typo’d !+ rather than the intended != which has been fixed.

Note:  it is gross profit NOT gross revenue.

I am well aware of the difference between gross and net profit. Gross profit is after all operating costs, and net profit after tax.

Reduing the gross profit down to (oh no) just £815.4m after making payments for power move, is NOT going to force OVO into a loss situation. It just slightly reduces the Corporation Tax bill to HMRC!

Better back in the working people’s pockets than give to the government who manage to waste it.

And at the same time encouraging more people to participate in PM helping the environmental AND feel happier to be with OVO.

I know you are a volunteer but it feels like you are working for the marketing department of OVO.