Power Move - New challenge information and changes to Power Move

Short answer is that I’m out. Not leaving, but just not making an effort by waiting next to the oven until 7pm before cooking. When it was the £12/£15 a month as a guaranteed return I could see real results. 

Its now a gamble and I’m not an statistician, but my maths has been along the lines of:

£1.6m paid out in 2024

Max payment of £144, my payment of £84 ( I didn’t get any on the 6-9pm period as I can’t get home before 6 to cook). 

£1.6m/ £144 or £84 = 11,111 to 19,048 entries/ players / participants in 2024 (I know there will be people who earned less than me)

If each get 5 tickets this time, there are between 55,556 and 95,238 tickets. 

5 top, 125 mid and 17,900 low prizes

Very low chance of top prize, 0.13 to 0.225% chance of mid and 18 to 32% chance of a low prize. You can only win once. 

So, 1-in-3 to 1-in-5 chance of getting £2 for the effort. 

Prize fund. 

£1.6m / 12 = £133,333

Total value to prize fund for Feb is (5x2000)+(125x50)+(17900*2) = £52,050 🤐

So, yes, I’m out. With this now removed and the lack of interest for in-credit accounts I’ll be willing to move when my fixed term comes up to any company which offers a referral bonus.  

(There is of course the possibility that the person running this raffle is the same one who sent out the power-move-plus update and got their maths backwards, so we could all be getting £2000!) 

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.

I think you’ve misunderstood how it works. The window being smaller makes it easier. The target is to be below, not to get 15% of your usage during the peak time.

If you use exactly the same energy throughout the day e.g. just running the fridge/equipment on standby and no spikes like kettle boiling etc 6% will be in the 2 hour peak (10 hours a week, 168 hours total) So if you ensure you do the more intensive usage in the off peak, that % used during peak will reduce

Power move is about reducing peak demand true. There is a financial reason also 

Peak demand drive the price per MwH higher  

The electricity market which OVO purchases MwH prices are set every 30 minutes. Here is a brief example

date 28/01

Time      Settlement Period   Price/MwH

16:00               33                       £83.75

16:30               34                       £130

17:00               35                     £106.75

17:30               36                      £117.19

18:00               37                       £130

18:30               38                      £130

19:00               39                       £139

….

23:30              48                        £30   

Source Elexon

Reducing peak demand does reduce the risk of power outages but also reduce the cost to suppliers.          

Hmm my previous post about Ovo’s 1 billion pound profit seems to have been deleted and no notification sent to me about which forum rule I broke. It was literally just a headline and a link to a reputable site so which rule did I break?

https://www.ovoenergy.com/terms/customer-forum-terms-of-use

Edit: So I got a PM saying I broke rule 5.2(f)

”(f) anything that is detrimental to the quality or the intended spirit of the Community, or that is completely off-topic.”

​@huevo to appeal content removal, please email forum@ovoenergy.com .

I can’t help you with that - I don’t have ModPowers.

Exactly. Some people are saying that OVO don’t make any money by getting us to shift power, and that’s rubbish. OVO have to buy the power on the market, in order to sell it to us. They buy some of it months or weeks ahead, some days ahead, some hours ahead, and some has to be resolved after the actual demands have occurred. This is all through the “balancing mechanism”.
So OVO has to pay much more for electricity that we use at peak times on a weekday. Hence, if OVO convinces us all to shift power out of that time period into other time periods, OVO spends a lot less on buying that energy.

The £10, £12, £15 payments for the “old” power move scheme were a way of passing some of that cost saving on to us. To be honest, the payment should have been probably more than £15 for some users, and based on a much more transparent and fair system based on “Time Of Use” and actually how much you used, not just the proportion of energy used within a set window.

In the “new” power move system, my reward would be, on average, between 2p and 9p a month (I did the calculations which are at the bottom of page 1 of this thread). Meanwhile OVO would be saving a LOT of money by me shifting power. I’m not prepared to allow OVO to make tremendous reductions in their costs, when they’re only prepared to pass on 2-9p a month of those costs savings to me.

Other suppliers are offering substantial discounts for “Time Of Use” now, like ½ price electricity at weekends. Might be time to switch supplier!

Time of Use is cool… Until it isn’t when you get stung. It’s not always the right choice because if it hits the Max Limiter Cap, you can end up paying FAR more than you would otherwise.

It is worth remembering also, that the cost of buying the energy from the grid isn’t the only thing OVO has to pay for… Sure, this Forum isn’t cheap to run but the cost savings massively outweigh the money spent on it and creates a massive use case that more than convinces the bosses to let it stay active. I’m not sure I am allowed to share the numbers but the amount of cost saving that comes from having the Forum is a very, very big figure. Unlike the Forum however, Power Move doesn’t have that privilege and the team behind it has to work a LOT harder to justify spending any money at all on it.

But then you’ve got all the other stuff...

​@GrumpyTrucker it appears that I may have missed one of your comments. I had a warning from a tool I use that indicated as such so my apologies for that.

As I mentioned earlier, Power Move is fully self-funded by OVO and there’s no upstream pot they can pull from to replenish or reimburse OVO for whatever rewards they dish out - it comes directly from OVO’s own bank accounts. I think Power Move Flex might be getting some kind of reimbursement as part of the upstream CrowdFlex Trial but I don’t know for sure (don’t rely on that being the case either!). But regular Power Move definitely is self-funded by OVO.

The new times make it easier, not harder, and merely chop one hour off of the “Peak” definition but otherwise still fall within the same times as before. I also stand by my view (as do other Forum Volunteers!) that the behaviour you describe is precisely why Power Move exists in the first place. If we don’t change voluntarily, then change may become mandatory. I’d rather not see mandatory load shedding…

In the interests of transparency, there are multiple OVO Staff monitoring this thread and some of them are talking to me behind the scenes. I can’t reveal what those messages are because they’re not for publication but do know that every comment is being read and actionable feedback is being sent to the right teams should it come up.

I also have direct access to the Power Move team. I talk to them a lot so if I spot useful stuff being discussed here, you can be sure they’ll see it too.

Apologies for the triple comment. I might think about asking a Forum Moderator to help me merge these later, but for now I’ll let them run standalone. If you see two of them disappear - that’s probably why!

I will also mention that the idea of Power Move never has been about having OVO save money. If it was, then they’ve absolutely failed at that goal. As a “Loss Leader” type thing, it’ll never make money by itself and can only act as a way to attract customers into buying other products that do make a profit. Hence why supermarkets sell milk so cheap - they deliberately make a loss on it to get you into the store and make up the losses on everything else.

If you think about the new system as being “monthly rewards” you’re inevitably going to get wonky maths. Your chances of winning are much higher than the National Lottery and at least ya don’t have to pay to enter so you lose nothing if you don’t win!

On the other hand, you might win £100 on the National Lottery one day… But hang on a sec, you spent £101 on Lottery Tickets and that was your first win so your actual prize is -£1 and you’re still out of pocket…

The Power Move team did want me to mention however, that while the app will let you know whether you won anything from a prize draw, you will still automatically receive any prizes even if you forget to check in. This includes the years free energy one - if you win, it’s automatically delivered with no action required on your part.

Bad idea. Much prefer real account credits rather than fantasy “prizes”.  Disappointed in Ovo.

People don’t want a lottery, that’s the main message. People are not interested in playing games. They want to collaborate in achieving an actual goal. An abstract idea doesn’t work for that. 

Also, it’s all sounds like it’s hard for OVO to carry on, so let’s understand and support them. From the information I can find online, OVO’s revenues are growing. In other words, they do a successful business. Also, this year it’s not the only of the Big Six energy suppliers who doesn’t participate in DFS. Do the other ones makes the same changes? It’s if we want to compare, but I would focus on this company as we are this company’s customers. 

One more thing. DFS was introduced when we had an energy crisis. On that time the possibility of blackouts was hight. It’s not like that these days. 

OVO’s Power Move Flex is very active, part of the CrowdFlex trial under NESO’s DFS. 

If you look at my reply to ​@GrumpyTrucker yesterday, you’ll see a NESO warning from a couple of weeks ago about a predicted excess of demand over supply starting at 16:30 that day. It’s certainly still ‘like that these days’.

The 8th  January  it came real close to load shedding. Between 15:00 and 18:30 reflected by the high price charged per MwH

Time      Settlement Period   Price/MwH

15:00               33                    £2900  <------

18:30              38                     £2900  <------

by 22:30 price  per MwH dropped to £130 MwH

IMHO the previous Power Move was not a loss leader. But good economics to move demand to a period of low price per MwH.

Keep in mind the price charged to consumer does not, to a great extent vary hour by hour. There is one supplier who does. I believe for a short preiod of time they capped their rate at £1 per KwH. I personally go for fixed price KwH for 2 years.

If and quite rightly demand can be moved outwith the peak to lower price per MwH. That is no bad thing

I made a comment regarding the period you mention noting how high the cost per MwH reached. I received a message it was be reviewed before being published.

Source Elexon  

Ok. I’m losing the point in our conversation. As per 4th December 2024, according to NESO, OVO is not taking part in DFS this year [link here]. According the same source we can see that another three Big Six’s energy suppliers are not in too. At least two of them continue their energy shifting initiative as apparently it was. One year and two years ago more of the Big Six’s suppliers were involved.
Also, if we would have the same demand as in 2022, we would have energy price the same high, wouldn’t we?  I understand, we still have some demands, but they are not that bad as we experienced some years ago. 

I feel we went far away from the main topic. 

Actually, I’ve had messages from some folks who say they do want a lottery and are cool with the changes - they just didn’t want to say so publicly and wish to remain anonymous for fear of getting blasted over it. I offered to post on their behalf to shield their names in this thread.

Additionally… Is it really appropriate to go blowing tons of money on paying out £15 a month to every Power Move player when the same money could instead be spent on helping those who are vulnerable? It’s not as easy a balance as you might assume.

This really isn’t a fantasy thing - to do so would be highly illegal. OVO is bound by UK Law to deliver on any prizes that are won in full compliance with the prize draw rules. That’s the biggest difference from Power Move V1 to Power Move V2 - it becomes even more legally binding to have OVO cough up if you win.

You have to consider it from both angles! Either way, if these changes didn’t happen then eventually someone high up at OVO would have pulled the plug and killed the scheme.

What would you rather have? A small chance to get something or a 100% chance of getting nothing?

Let’s do not involve vulnerable people. Nobody said OVO shouldn’t support them. It’s completely different topic. And why “instead”? It’s the false dilemma. 
Also, I don’t remember saying that nobody wants the changes. The point is that we, some commenters in this forum, don’t like these changes, and explaining why. And it’s ok that some people disagree with our points. There is no need to fear. 
Something or nothing? Again, the false dilemma. I’m sure there are more than two possible outcomes. For me personally this “something” equals to nothing. I can see, I’m not alone in this. 

I referenced vulnerable customers as an example because I am one myself due to Autism. Supporting those who are vulnerable takes priority over stuff like Power Move so my point is that if PM is gobbling up all the cash, it puts other more critical stuff at risk of being starved. I raise this purely for context, nothing more.

You’re welcome to say that you don’t like the changes - we have no problem with that - but it’s worth bearing in mind that a LOT of those who like these changes might not post here to say so. To that effect, I act as their voice to help balance things out a bit and make for a more balanced discussion.

Monitoring of OVO’s other public/social channels suggests very few (if any) complaints have been shared on social media about these changes.

As for the outcomes? I’m afraid there are/were only two outcomes. Either leave PM V1 running and get it killed for being too much of an unscalable financial drain, or make changes to balance it out and make it more scalable as well as financially viable. Naturally, the PM team chose the latter.

I know what I’d rather pick...

I agree the previous system provided a concrete reward. I would much prefer the previous system. 

There is a real reward for ovo if demand is moved to away from peak demand. eg today at 

15:30 settlement period 32 £84 MwH 

17:30 settlement period 36 £154 MwH 

Power move is not a loss leader

Live Market Rate != What OVO Paid. It’s far more complicated than that.

The price I have quoted are today prices.

source Elexon System Buy / Sell Prices

True… But that doesn’t mean OVO paid them because they might have private deals with different rates. And a supplier would be incredibly foolish to rely purely on the live market without at least some level of hedging in place.

But that’s neither here nor there for this discussion...

The people who “prefer a lottery” clearly haven’t actually worked out what the odds are and don’t realise that their average probable reward for power moving will drop from £10-15 a month to less than 10p on average. They’re being conned by the apparent illusion that they stand a fair chance of winning £2000 or £125, which they don’t. Do the sums. (See the bottom of page 1 of this thread).

OVO make money out of us power moving, a huge amount of money, due to the differences of the cost of wholesale electricity at different times of the day. They’re just deciding that they’re no longer going to allow us to get any reward for helping them save money. Fine, if that is OVO’s new way, then I don’t power move any more, I have my oven on at peak time and get my dinner at a normal time again.

The Electricity market operates on 48 buy and sell periods over 24 Hours. I

for the purposes of trading and settlement electricity is considered to be generated, transported, delivered and used in half hour chunks called Settlement Periods.