What's the biggest impact changes I can make to my usage to help me hit my Power Move target?

It seems like you’re doing everything right apart from the cooking & making cups of tea, which are massive electricity users. I get round the not cooking between 6 & 9 by cooking a big pan full on the hob in off-peak times (including the weekends now!) & freezing it in portions, then take out what you’ll need in the morning to defrost ready to warm up when you get home from work. That way you’ll massively reduce your 6 to 9 usage.

If you have to cook between 6 to 9 maybe simply cook enough for the next day as well & pop the rest in the fridge then you’re only cooking every other day & halving your usage then. 

I also make a pot of tea earlier & fill a thermos to drink in peak time. If you aren’t home in time maybe you could fill a thermos at work? 
 

Which is precisely why we STRONGLY advise two things in relation to Power Move:

1. NEVER, EVER deprive yourself of anything essential just to meet targets - Power Move is about MOVING usage around, not reducing it further. If - for example - you need to eat at certain times such as for medical reasons, please by all means do so at whatever time(s) you’ve been advised to eat at even if it’s during Peak Hours.
2. If being on Power Move is causing serious negative effects e.g. severe physical or mental health issues, we HIGHLY recommend dropping out immediately

If a Forum Volunteer such as myself - or one of the Forum Moderators - spots signals related to either of these two things (or both!), this is exactly the advice we’ll give. If needed, we can signpost them to resources both at OVO and elsewhere for further assistance.

We also constantly monitor the Forum for any signs of energy rationing behaviours from visitors. If we spot that, we’ve got arrangements in place to flag it up and get OVO’s attention.

This stance is shared by ALL Forum Volunteers, Forum Moderators and OVO’s internal teams. We don’t ever want to see cool stuff like Power Move ruining someone’s life, which is why there are safeguards in place like these.

The only other thing you can do, and this is general advice to anyone who is a low user and having difficulty meeting the target, is to use the In House Display (IHD - paired with a smart meter) to go round the house and temporarily switch off all the items you have to make sure you know what is taking power.  People often forget the router and the aerial amplifier (in a weak TV signal area) but maybe other devices such as the older style dumb phone power supplies which take a few watts unlike the modern smart phone ones which barely take anything at all (when not charging). Track down those extra power vampires that are on 24/7 and make sure they are only on outside of the peak. A surprising one in the summer for me is the boiler pump which takes 90 watts when heating the hot water tank. If you can schedule hot water heating outside of the peak it may just make a difference. Some people only just miss a target.

I went round my house and found everything taking power except for an annoyingly untraceable 1 watt drain. Then it suddenly went to zero when the backlight on the IHD timed out.

MAKE SURE you switch essential things back on again afterwards. Happy hunting!

Peter

I do see where you are coming from. but switching things off seems a bit like hard work. l might have my router on but not on my iPad all the time otherwise it gives me a headache because you are looking down on it. telly on but why should you go without just to save a bit.

Has anyone noticed or even documented a change in peak-period consumption as the weather changes?

Many PM participants have grown used to switching off everything that’s not absolutely essential during the peak period, so any perceived change will be in ‘essential usage’ - including fridges and freezers. When the temperature in my kitchen rose above 20° for the first time this year a few weeks ago, I thought I noticed both the fridge and the freezer working a bit harder. However, the variation in peak-period usage is so erratic that I’m having difficulty comparing ambient temperature and essential electricity consumption. Those with sensors everywhere may be able to help here …

The chart is a quick attempt to see some sort of pattern. Beware the scales, fudged to exaggerate the trends if there are any. I may have to play with max/min daily temperatures to explain the difference between usage in the quiet hours (in this household, that’s 03:00 - 06:00) and the 18:00 - 21:00 peak period. In warm weather, it’s a lot warmer at 6 PM than it is at 6 AM, so I’d expect the fridge and freezer to reflect that. It might also be better to split the chart in two, with one for quiet hours v. temp and the other peak period v. temp, because otherwise the quiet hours curve is boringly flat. Anyway, spot the trends!
  

Yep, I realize that. That’s why I had a look at the quiet hours (3-6AM) specifically, where I see quite neat ~hourly peaks, fridge and freezer presumably in sync early on and drifting apart as the night progresses:
  

It’s going to be really fiddly to prove my conjecture, so I’m not sure I’ll do it. The gut feeling abides, though, that fridges and freezers can make a significant difference to the PM target zone consumption, and their negative impact is probably greater in warmer weather in poorly-insulated dwellings like mine. 

It won’t be a problem if this month’s weather continues in its current vein!

Hi @ramona9995 ,

Based on what you’ve said, you are NOT eligible for Power Move credits because you’re not actively playing the game as intended. You need to be shifting power usage around from Peak to Off-Peak slots during the same day - not just nuking absolutely everything all day and/or flatlining your usage all day.

The clue is in the name Power Move, not Power Shutdown.

I have seen lots of comments like this, I think that maybe OVO should explain better what they are trying to do as obviously quite a number of people do not understand what this is all about. It would seem that they think they should get a £10 discount even though they are using very little electricity in the first place. I have managed to qualify in the past but not every month, I do tend to avoid using power in the evening but do not let it dictate my life. What I do find irritating is when OVO fail to collect data from my smart meter I then get an email telling me I cannot claim any discount for that month. This has happened to me three times this year. Since it was OVO who installed the smart meter I think it’s a little unjust to refuse to pay out on something that they installed and I have no responsibility for. However, in my case, we have an all electric house and an electric car so £10 does not represent a large proportion of my bill. It just irritates, especially when Loop manages to get all the data!  

Because I joined it before we moved abroad that’s why a year before and still never got any credits when I did everything I was supposed to do 

Hey @ramona9995, 

If you took part, you should see this as credits on your energy statement, and you would have also received emails letting you know the outcome each month. 

 
As @Blastoise186 has pointed out, you’re no longer eligible if you’ve moved away. We wish you all the best with the move, and if you have any future questions, please let us know! 
​

As a single person who lives alone, works nine to 5. Has turned off everything. Uses minimal energy. Apparently I'm still "not reaching my target" sorry but how can using £32 energy a month on everything as average, including trying to fit in with ovos advice, still equate to having to pay £150 a month DD. It's all a rip off. As many have said, what do we have to do. You're going to get people turning fridges and freezers off. Sitting in darkness and having accidents in the home just to qualify for a discount they will never get. 

That’s what! You’d be surprised how much power lights (even LEDs), TVs and games consoles can draw. 

Have a look at your online account’s Usage pages. Take a typical day’s figures from the table below the Day bar charts. Add up the six figures for 2.00am to 4.30am. These three hours in the middle of the night should give a good indication of the household’s essential energy consumption. Anything above that is optional. Divide this total by 3 to find out what the essential background draw is in kW

Then check how much the stuff you are running could actually be using. These are typical figures I took from here:

So you could be drawing 550 W (0.55 kW) over and above the essentials. That would equate to 1.65 kWh if these things were constantly in use from 6-9 pm. If your essential background power draw is a modest 150 W, your total weekly usage would have to be 140 kWh for your 6-9pm usage to amount to less than 6.5% of the total. That is a lot of energy, and it’s not likely that you’re using that much. So it’s not surprising that you’re not achieving the Power Move target.

Your IHD can tell you how many kW you’re drawing at any given time, so check what the figure actually is a few times during the Power Move peak period.