Power Move - New challenge information and changes to Power Move

Sorry to be a pain, but if you’d like to continue the discussion on the balancing and settlement stuff, would you mind dropping it into a new thread for us? It’s a cool discussion that I’m totally up for being part of, it’s just that I’d rather keep this one focused on Power Move itself so that we don’t make things too confused. I can even have your comments moved over if that helps - just ask!

Thanks for understanding

The Power Move team did see your maths - they mentioned it to me as somehow I missed that.

However, I see a bit of a flaw with them. I can tell you now that there’s actually a lot more than 2 million customers on OVO’s books and waaaaay less than 1 million active Power Move players. The odds of winning are therefore much higher than your figures suggest.

Sorry, my question is not relevant to this topic. I’m just personally interested how OVO helps vulnerable people? This is not a discussion, it’s for my personal knowledge.

The reason I describe how the market operates was in response to your comment

quote

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.

end quote

Power move is “not a loss leader” it is good economics and attempts to flatten peak demand 

Regarding numbers, this is why I worked out based on how much OVO paid out. 

They said £1.6m over 2024. 

If everyone got the max amount (£144/yr) - 11,111 users. 

If everyone was on £3/m, (£36/yr) - 44,444 users 

The thread is getting derailed and its reminding me of forums as a teenager.

Good luck to those who like a lottery. 

Thinking of enrolled users and OVO’s income from this user base. Using price cap of £1738/yr

Based on 11,111 users - £19.3m

Based on 44,444 users - £77.2m

So, I would be interested to see how many people are enrolled out of the 4 million users. 

Based on price cap, that’s an income of £6,952,000,000/yr- (£579,333,333/month)

So, running a lottery worth £52k/month is really going to trouble the bean counters. 

Also, remember that its no more than 1% of OVO’s customer base who are enrolled in this, so its not worth their time/effort. The other 99% of users will complain about the 1% getting free money paid for by their bills. 

Sure. Some of the options on the table include extra support with bills (if you need it), upcoming power outage alerts, priority power restoration and potentially having all contact with OVO redirected to the Priority Support Team (which often means super-fast response times on Phone/Live Chat and more pro-active account monitoring, among other things)*.

The circumstances you mentioned to me do also qualify, so feel free to check out https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/priority-services-register and sign up via https://www.ovoenergy.com/register-for-priority-services .

I open up this offer not just to Costeek, but to anyone who feels this service may help. All I ask is please use the two links above as I can’t process those applications myself. I admit it might not help replace what Power Move V1 did, but if you were relying on PM to keep on top of bills, then you may be able to make use of it anyway. You can of course choose to decline this offer and that’s OK too - it’s always open if you change your mind later.

*Apologies, but that last feature doesn’t work on the OVO Forum because we don’t have a way to know. But you can still let the Forum Moderators know of any such circumstances and request reasonable adjustments to help improve your experience here, simply ping them an email via forum@ovoenergy.com and they’ll have a chat with you.

So sorry 🤷‍♂️. You’re quite right that OVO isn’t taking part in ‘the’ NESO DFS. CrowdFlex is also ‘a’ demand flexibility service run by NESO for Ofgem. Same idea, same aims, slightly different methods. We’re apparently halfway through the current trial: https://www.neso.energy/document/352246/download 

Demand in 2022 was indeed higher than before following the relaxation of COVID restrictions. However, this coincided with supply uncertainty following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, leading to the price hikes we all suffered from. The need for flexibility now arises in part from phenomena like anticyclonic gloom (when both solar and wind power generation are at their lowest) and from the closing down of Britain’s last coal-fired power station. There was no danger of a blackout on 8 January, because extra capacity was available and was made available in time. That may not always be the case. But the more we can do to reduce the amount of fossil fuel burnt to generate electricity, the better for all of us.

I don’t think this discussion is too far off-topic; it’s as well to understand why schemes like Power Move and Power Move Flex exist. Many participants regard them simply as ways to reduce their bills, which IMO is rather missing the point. 

Indeed. If you are/were trying to treat Power Move/Power Move Flex as some kind of Get Rich Quick Scheme, then I’m afraid you’ve totally got the wrong end of the stick - the monetary rewards and/or incentives were never the intention of these schemes in the first place as it was all about shifting consumer behaviour to encourage moving usage out of peak times.

Alas, since most folks won’t do so for free, that’s why the incentives exist - since it’s the only way most people would be inclined to take part.

CrowdFlex is about Power Move Flex, which is different (additional to?) from Power Move. We even have a different forum group for that. But it was interesting to read the report! Thank you for sharing!

If I’m right, PM Flex is more oriented toward those who own EVs. I agree; any contribution is welcomed, as everyone benefits from a better-balanced grid and greener energy. 

When I pointed out that OVO was taking a part in DFS and not anymore, I had a different idea in my head. When I learned about the DFS (I wasn’t aware of the details before this discussion), I realised the following sequence: ESO got nationalised (“became NESO”), DFS T&C got changed, OVO (and some other Big Six energy suppliers) stopped its participation. But I could be wrong, it is pure speculation. However, I can see that those other suppliers continue their DFS-like initiative in the same way even after that. I do not intend to continue this discussion, I think we have already said enough. I’d say that discussion was hot. Though, I don't think that anyone meant PM as the ‘Get Rich Scheme’. It was more the opportunity to reduce the energy bill. And I would guess that many of them don’t own EVs (meaning will not much benefit from PM Flex).

Okay can we see the odds presented then, as the PowerMove team calculates them? If you’re running a lottery scheme then it’s only fair to give the people partaking a reasonable and transparent idea of what their odds and likely rewards are.

But the starting point (as per the calcs at the bottom of page 1 of this thread) are that if you get 12 entries a month, your average winnings will be 10p or less per month. I assumed that there were 1,000,000 people enrolled in power move and that each would get, on average 5 entries per month. If OVO predicts different values to this, then lets see the OVO predictions and how that plays out into the odds and predicted “winnings” for an average punter. But seriously, the numbers (odds or winning and/or prize values) would have to improve by a factor of about 100 to increase my prediction of <10 p per month to any sensible value of £10 per month reward.

I for one will not be taking part in this new power move. It's bad enough that the price of electric and gas is kept high by ofgem to cover for the people who hit the price cap but moving my electric use and paying full price for it all just to give the savings to someone else is not on. As an Engineer I know how much peak electric can cost and I didn't mind moving it for my cut of the savings. Now I will use it when I wont and probably use more at peak times as a protest. If I wasn't signed up for the solar panels I would now probably move suppliers as this deal is rubbish. Also now worried the solar deal may have backhanded costs

Haven't misunderstood a single thing about PM since the day I joined having met the target at an average of 1.5% to 2% each month. Go back and read my post on page 3. The last line of your comment is exactly what I'd already said.

I have no issue with power move. OVO is entitled to do whatever they want within the law and have made PM just as accessible and achievable to very low users such as myself to meet the full quota. It would have been nice to have had the certainty of money rewards in the future as we have had up until now but there we are. The 2% is still achievable for the £10 reward for some people. Those people will just turn everything off and either go to bed, go for a walk or all gather round the candle and have a seance to old grandma.

On page 2 of this thread, Chris_OVO said : “The £10 credit for people whose peak is less than 2% runs until the end of May 2025, after that it will be prize draw entries only, explained in the terms - 4.4 Until 31st May 2025, any customer who has peak usage of less than 2.00% (1.99% or below) will also receive £10 energy bill credit, as well as their prize draw entries.”

So your reward for sitting in the dark between 5 and 7pm reduce to <10p a month from 31st May. Still got no issue with that?!

What OVO is doing is an interesting experiment in manipulation of customers. We’ve all been trained up in reducing usage on weekday peak hours, and we’ve been happy to do it because there was a tangible reward for stumbling about in the dark with barely any lights on.

Now they are hoping that people will continue with those modified and often inconvenient usage patterns, clinging on to the vain hope of winning £50 or £2000. But the odds of winning that £50 or £2000 are so low that your average reward per month will be < 10p per month.

Today is 31st Jan, the last day that any tangible reward will come for PowerMove.

So this evening, I’ll spend half an hour removing the timer from the fridge, resetting the heating controls so it comes on at 5PM and the house is warm when I get in, and I’ll be using the oven and boiling the kettle between the hours of 5 and 7 on a weekday evening whenever I fancy it. I haven’t enjoyed those luxuries for a year or two now. I was prepared to adjust my life that way for £12 or £15 a month, but not for <10p per month.

 ^ I’m with him/her, although i don’t agree on the odds, but OVO won’t share the odds.

Its making me smile, thinking that the washing machine can be on earlier, meaning that the tumble dryer finishes earlier… Simple things. 

And I’m going to smile even more when I end up winning the £2,000 energy credits multiple times from the massively increased odds and you won’t win anything after all of you quit. :D

Because yup, one person can win the top prize multiple times in a row. Unlikely, but not impossible!

Cutting your nose off to spite your face is not the solution here. All you’ll be doing is making the energy bills for your area more expensive…

As I’ve said before, the nature of my volunteer duties in the fire service means I have a random schedule. Makes it SUPER easy to shift my usage out of Peak times - because I’m almost never in during Peak times anymore! :P

So how many people are in PowerMove. OVO won’t tell us.

There are 5 prizes of £2000 to be won every month.

If there are even as few as 100,000 people in PowerMove, then the odds of you winning that prize each month, if you have an average “number of entries” are about 5/100,000, or 0.00005.

That means you’ll have to wait on average 20,000 months, or 1666 years, to win the £2000. Good luck if you think you can fluke “multiple times from the massively increased odds” in your lifetime!

OVO won’t tell us how many people are in PowerMove. The only information we have is “there’s actually a lot more than 2 million customers on OVO’s books and waaaaay less than 1 million active Power Move players”

So how many active Power Move Players are there? I guess 100,000 in the sum above.

But even if the number is as low as 10,000, you’re still looking at winning £2000 once every 2000 months, i.e. every 166 years.

OVO’s asking us to enter a lottery where we’re not even given an idea of the odds, or likely reward, within a power of 10. All we can tell is that in all likelihood the odds just aren’t worth bothering with.

Some of that information has been released only to the Forum Volunteers. If you were to become one yourself, you’d be able to see behind the curtain. To get that status however, you’d need to help out and gain our trust. If you do, we’ll notice and may reach out.

But I will say this again. The advertised prizes might not be the only ones. Let’s just say your odds of winning something could be even higher than you think…

The National Lottery has ridiculously low odds of winning the Jackpot - and some US Lotteries have even lower odds still. Doesn’t stop MILLIONS of folks from entering anyway by submitting paid entries that could easily outweigh their winnings. At least OVO Power Move V2 doesn’t require payment to enter!

Hey everyone,

First of all, wow, this has been an explosive and super engaged article/thread. It’s been interesting reading through all of your points, opinions and feelings about the changes around Power Move as we head into 2025.

You can trust that all of this is being fed back to the relevant parties involved with Power Move and we’ll continue to do so on a regular basis.

I just would like to say, although some of us are clearly very passionate about the subject and some are not happy at all with the changes, I’d just like to urge everyone to try and stay on point as much as possible, trying to understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinions about this matter (positive or negative).

Our roles as forum moderators are quite simple, we want to bring all of our users important updates and information about changes/updates like Power Move etc from OVO., as well as making sure you’re all being given a fair chance at having your voices heard and that everyone’s following our forum community guidelines.

It’s important to stay on track so all of your points, suggestions and ideas can be clearly addressed and may help make the changes you’d like to see in the services/products OVO offers.

Thanks to all of you sharing your knowledge and being supportive to one another - I hope we can further this conversation on and make Power Move as great as we all want it to be!

Just before the Community Manager banishes us all, I’d ask you to compare this ‘billion pound’ profit to the equivalent figure the previous year. I think you’ll find that OVO Energy’s profit for 2023 (actually £817m) fell £458m short of their 2022 loss. 

lets explain what happens at Peak times, a good example is the 8th of January this year where the cost of electricity for OVO to by was around £1.16 kWh for them to buy much higher than we pay ( each day peak costs are different depending on overall demands of the country). At 2 am in the morning that day it cost £0.055 kWh for them to buy. The price we pay is an average price + something to cover for other families that have hit the price cap and don't pay any more as then the company would go bankrupt, so if you use less at peak times your personal average price comes down and their profits increase.  The current system gives the consumer some repayment for their reduced average.  The new system, as someone has said is a lottery where you play and pay to play by using less electricity and then still pay the ofgem average price. I am not sure even Albert Einstein would want to play a lottery like this one.

Wooohoooo, 19:01, freedom from these shackles ! 😜 

Looking forward to Monday 

Correct me if I’m wrong, but the price cap isn’t a cap (limit on total bill), it’s a theoretical limit based on the magical average user. Its a limit on the unit price and standing charge, but if you use more, you pay more. 

I personally agree with everyone’s points about what has been a brilliant motivator, now looking like an utterly pointless lottery where you’re not even told the odds of winning. Coupled with the blatant exploitation of forum volunteers, and the fact that OVO won’t integrate with Ripple Energy, this change to power move is what will finally set me free. 

I’m on a Fixed Rate Tariff that sits well below the Ofgem Price Cap so this particular “lottery” is actually even cheaper for me to play than it would be otherwise. Remember that not everyone is on the price cap tariffs - plenty of folks also play the fix deal game too!

Additionally, Power Move has always been about MOVING usage, not reducing it. Long story short: MOVE heavy usage outside of the Peak slots and you can still do whatever you want the rest of the day. If you can’t do so, no worries! You lose nothing if you can’t take part.

Arguably, you were never shackled in the first place. Power Move is designed to not punish those who didn’t manage to shift usage for a genuine reason. Alas, by leaving, what you’ve done is increased my chances of scooping a prize at the end of February.

I noted that someone asked for details about the odds of winning something. I do know the stats, but it’s under an NDA type request at this time and I don’t have permission to reveal that data. This is standard stuff when you get to peer behind the curtain because leaking things before they’re ready for the limelight is a sure-fire way to lose that trust. My apologies for this. If the Power Move team grants permission however, I may be able to drop some stats but I can’t reach them at weekends.