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Power Move - New challenge information and changes to Power Move

Power Move - New challenge information and changes to Power Move
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231 replies

  • Carbon Cutter**
  • 5 replies
  • February 4, 2025
Will R wrote:

Ha ha ha. I too am an ex techie and you are definitely a luddite! Laptops are history use apps as a tool, not a master and you'll be fine

Llaptops are the preferred choice of some and not others why funel people into things that are not their choice.  Think evolution not revolution and let people slowly change. Ovo have it wrong by changing their systems dramatically too


  • Carbon Cutter**
  • 6 replies
  • February 4, 2025
MGSteve wrote:

I can’t even take part this year, because I don’t use apps on my Smartphone!!!   Last year, Power Move and more useful to me Power Move Plus worked fine on a laptop; but this year OVO has insisted that we use an app.   I wonder why???

I don’t use the app


  • Carbon Cutter**
  • 6 replies
  • February 4, 2025
fancyabrew wrote:

hang on is this in addition too the bill discount or instead of!?  If instead off lots of people won’t bother!

‘ course we won’t bother. Smacks of box ticking to me. Someone’s told them to set up something so they’ve done this. No-one will bother + just think all the people who didn’t check! We didn’t bother much in Jan but still got £6. We were good at it but obvs not bothering any more. Way to go insult your customers Ovo. 


  • Carbon Cutter**
  • 10 replies
  • February 5, 2025

Staring at a small screen make my eyes bleed. I don’t like using phone apps either but the GenZ are taking charge


AaD wrote:

Why have OVO changed the Power Move so badly for their loyal customers? It's not worth wasting your time and efforts on anymore. Terrible terrible news for the us. Corporate greed in action!

I agree. I for one am going to abandon my cooking dinner much later in night. They are incentivised by Ofgem to move electricity usage out of the peak hours so it will backfire on them. Those who want don’t want to try will NEVER change, regardless of the rewards. 


brichard wrote:

I really dislike this change. I liked saving energy at peak time for a guaranteed return. I do not like games of chance such as prize draws. Please go back to the old way as soon as you can. I think this will r dice my motivation for moving power. And will definitely stop me from further investing in technology, such as battery storage, to increase my power move capabilities.

Sorry

Me too. It will backfire on them if we all decide to not to participate. They are incentivised by Ofgem to move usage off peak hours. We have been doing our bit. Those who don’t want to help will never be persuaded. Very poor move


GrumpyTrucker wrote:

Not a good change. Looking at the scale, I'd probably get 3-5 entries. Probably just not going to bother even trying to reduce usage if there's no benefit like money off the bill, and the number of entries will be so low anyway.

I believe OVO get money from somewhere to fund these schemes and they're supposed to benefit as many users as possible? This way the big winners are going to be people who already have things like solar and use very little grid energy and get a lot more entries into the draws than everyone else.

Horrible change, not going to bother I think.

They do. All the companies are incentivised by Ofgem to come up with a scheme to move peak usage. It’s about trying to balance the grid


Blastoise186 wrote:

Just to clarify something real quick.

OVO Power Move is fully self-funded by OVO - there’s no-one upstream chipping in.

Because of that, OVO doesn’t make a penny of profit out of it. It actually costs them a fortune!

The prize draw is also an automated computer process by the way. No human is involved for legal reasons - it has to be as truly random as possible. It’s a similar thing with the National Lottery. A human is allowed to press the Start Button to get it going, but after that the machine must do everything by itself.

That’s not true. All of the energy companies are incentivised by Ofgem. If they manage to hit their targets of moving energy they are rewarded with money from Ofgem which will outstrip any outlay. Hence why all energy companies have some scheme or another - one has free electricity on a Sunday for instances if the consumer meets their targets


Firedog
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 1980 replies
  • February 5, 2025
suzannemousley wrote:

All of the energy companies are incentivised by Ofgem. If they manage to hit their targets of moving energy they are rewarded with money from Ofgem which will outstrip any outlay. 
 

I’d be very interested to find out where you learned this from. Do you have a link to the source?

I know of schemes like CrowdFlex where Ofgem indeed provides some funding for the trials, but OVO’s Power Move isn’t part of this.


  • Carbon Cutter*****
  • 10 replies
  • February 5, 2025

Hi,

currently, there seem to be some Ovo website problems - today, I was thrown out of the system when logging in!

Ovo's website is notoriously slow to use - at least in my case.

Today, I subscribed to the new Power Move Channel: 1) home page, 2) tick New Power Move icon/link, 3) tick 'agree to conditions', 4) click 'done'.

It took a long time, but eventually I saw message appear that I've subscribed, etc.

Good luck!

 


  • Carbon Cutter****
  • 18 replies
  • February 5, 2025

Gosh, so many complaining. In general people don't like change but in life things often changes. I've waited to comment or I would have given a knee jerk response because initially I didn't like it either.

We are low users but have managed to get down to 8% for the last two months (we were well over 12% before we started Power Move). As the peak has decreased by 5 hours per week it should reduce our percentage but doubt very much that we can go under 2% to get the £10. We will most likely only be getting entries into the prize draw from now on. We will still try, for us it's about using energy wisely and if we win something along the way happy days. The odds are no worse than Lotto (which we don't do) and it's free entry.

We also take part in Power Move Flex so as long as this continues we will still save a few pennies if the times aren't silly o clock (I won't be getting up at 4am tomorrow to put a load of washing on).  

Overall, we are still doing our bit and will continue to even if PM changes again.


  • Carbon Cutter****
  • 96 replies
  • February 5, 2025

It isn’t available via desktop. You should have installed app on your mobile being able to do so.


  • Carbon Cutter*****
  • 10 replies
  • February 5, 2025

Misunderstanding - I was replying to other Forum member who had problems!

Me - I'm all set up (see my post)!


Emmanuelle_OVO
Community Manager
  • Community Manager
  • 2562 replies
  • February 5, 2025

We'd like to clarify a couple of comments about Power Move and Power Move Flex.

Power Move Flex is an OFGEM funded project/trial funded by the Strategic Infrastructure Fund (SIF). All rewards are passed straight through to the customer and no share of the rewards is kept by OVO.

Power Move is an OVO funded service, we receive no payment/incentive from Ofgem to run Power Move.


  • New Member***
  • 1 reply
  • February 5, 2025

Oh dear. Time to revisit a move to Octopus Energy again then.

I want my energy usage cost and price per unit to reflect energy conservation on peak / CO2 intensity and wholesale prices.

It's that simple.

Offering some version of that as a monthly discount in post was fine, bit convoluted, but fine.

I do not want prize draws, grab the free duck, slot machines or anything else.

Please go back to the old way as soon as possible.


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  • Carbon Cutter*****
  • 51 replies
  • February 5, 2025

Is that completely honest???

I can accept that OVO pays all the (Power Move Flex) rewards from OFGEM to us.   But, the electricity demand moved becomes cheaper to supply, and OVO keeps this difference!!!  (I believe peak electricity costs OVO something like 20p a unit, and non-peak units something like 10p).  

I don’t object to OVO taking this margin, and then using it to run the scheme, but they should come clean about it!!!!   

 

 


Peter E
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 323 replies
  • February 5, 2025

The way the electricity markets is complex. Ofgem requires OVO to buy all supply on contract** (Fixed Price) on the Futures market well in advance of supply. What you seem to be talking about is the day-ahead market where prices can be 10p a unit but OVO doesn't trade significant quantities of electricity here. Octopus does for its Agile customers (I'm one). It's the Futures prices which are high and they have already been paid for. The only possible gain that OVO could get for cutting peak use is DUoS (Distribution Use of System) charges and I don't think there is much leeway, if any, here.

 

Peter

 

** A new Ogem rule to stop suppliers going bust (like Bulb) should there be another repeat of the shock energy price rise as we had not that long ago.


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  • Carbon Cutter*****
  • 51 replies
  • February 5, 2025

I’ve never been able to find out how much OVO actual pays for electricity, and how it varies depending on demand.  But, clearly they do pay more for peak units, otherwise they wouldn’t have anything like Power Move.

All I was trying to say was that they clearly do make a little from Power Move Flex; it’s not a completely philanthropic operation, as they are trying to suggest. 

 


Firedog
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 1980 replies
  • February 5, 2025
Emmanuelle_OVO wrote:

Power Move Flex is an OFGEM funded project/trial ...
Power Move is an OVO funded service, …
 

Thanks for clearing that up once and for all for many misguided customers here. I’d still like to find out where ​@suzannemousley heard that “All of the energy companies are incentivised by Ofgem. If they manage to hit their targets of moving energy they are rewarded with money from Ofgem which will outstrip any outlay. “ I’d try to put it right if I could find it.

 


Peter E
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 323 replies
  • February 5, 2025
lozzy0603 wrote:

Oh dear. Time to revisit a move to Octopus Energy again then.

I want my energy usage cost and price per unit to reflect energy conservation on peak / CO2 intensity and wholesale prices.

It's that simple.

It also been eye wateringly expensive at 100p a kWh at the peak times as had happened recently. The energy supply situation in Europe is different this year (since Ukraine didn't renew the gas transit of Russian gas to Europe after 2024) and since Germany has mothballed it's nuclear fleet (post Fukushima accident)  it has started to run out of energy on dark, windless days and the day ahead market price has gone through the roof at times.  Since the Tracker product averages the daily price that is horrendous as well and is actually worse if you can actually shift your usage.

 

I'm hanging in atm but I'm only breaking even with the SVR and doing worse than a good Fixed Price contract. Last year I saved about £600 compared to the SVR but it should get better with the warmer weather and a windy March.


Look before you leap as they say.

 

Peter

 


Blastoise186
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 7967 replies
  • February 5, 2025
MGSteve wrote:

I’ve never been able to find out how much OVO actual pays for electricity, and how it varies depending on demand.  But, clearly they do pay more for peak units, otherwise they wouldn’t have anything like Power Move.

All I was trying to say was that they clearly do make a little from Power Move Flex; it’s not a completely philanthropic operation, as they are trying to suggest. 

 

I’m afraid the way that part of the market works is - to be brutally honest - ridiculously complicated and it’s not a simple case of saying it’s X price today and Y price tomorrow. The price can quite literally change every 30 minutes just like the stock markets do.

IIRC there’s also the factor that Suppliers can negotiate private deals with generation sources too which can influence how much the Supplier pays the upstream sources.

Apologies, but there’s no easy answer to that question.


Peter E
Plan Zero Hero
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 323 replies
  • February 5, 2025

I might be wrong but I believe that OVO is the only supplier without generating plant but having said that all generating capacity has to go through the same bidding process whether you own it or not. I e. As a generator you can't supply cheap energy to yourself for distribution to your customers.


Blastoise186
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  • Plan Zero Hero
  • 7967 replies
  • February 5, 2025

IIRC there’s a bunch of small suppliers without their own capacity, but OVO is the only major player that falls under the “We don’t have our own generators” category


  • Carbon Cutter****
  • 96 replies
  • February 5, 2025

I’m not sure I understand which post you are talking about. I’m guessing that the person you replied to also doesn’t see your reply here. 


Been part of last 2 challenges tried to rejoin nes one and it says we couldn’t update your settings check your connection and try again ..I gave connection nothing is blocking it my end ..anyone else getting this and have you managed to sort it tia 


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