Will averaging of daily readings following extended Eowyn powercuts impact Powermove?

Your smart meter actually holds all usage data for several months even if there’s a power cut. 
What you are seeing is probably an estimated set of usage data as the system has not yet been able to log actual usage (zero is an actual usage, whereas no data is not).

What will need to happen is for the missing correct data to be recovered and transmitted to OVO (they don’t have a direct feed) - if/when that happens, the correct readings should replace those estimated.

As PowerMove requires data to be available within a certain timeframe, they will need to determine if the readings are valid for the scheme - I’m sure there are probably some notes for such an occurrence in the T’s & C’s

I was going to say that the days have been averaged as the computer doesn’t know about power cuts (it probably lives in London) and simply thinks your meter had stopped working. But I am not sure if that makes sense as the hourly usage was there.  

This is a unique situation so I can’t give an answer myself - bear with me and I’ll escalate this.

Sorry ​@BPLightlog ( I appreciate you’re just a volunteer), as originally posted, CORRECT info for Friday was ALL there yesterday with CORRECT total.  CORRECT hourly total for Saturday is also now there. There is NO missing data - what is /was missing was my power supply.  As download is done daily and both appear to have been downloaded during correct period there is no way the Daily totals should be averaged.  I await an answer from OVO staff.

The Power Move team has been… Notified appropriately…

Please await their update. It may be relayed through either myself (Forum Volunteer) or via the Forum Moderators.

You seem to be comparing two separate sets of data. OVO collects two sets daily: the meter readings, normally stored at midnight, and the half-hourly usage data. The only place you will see the half-hourly data is in the table on the Day tab of the Usage page. Any other figures - including the one for Total Electricity kWh at the top of that tab - are taken from the meter readings.

It’s not clear what gets stored in the meter if it’s without power at midnight when it’s supposed to cache the register readings. It’s possible that the meter has enough battery power to do this, but I’d have to look that up. What do you see on the readings history page for 25 January? Is there a smart reading? This is the one that would normally be time-stamped 2025-01-25T00:00:0, but you’d have to look backstage to find the actual time-stamp, which is transmitted along with the kWh figure. Again, it’s possible that the meter, recognizing that there’s been no usage since before midnight, will store the latest reading before midnight as if it were taken at midnight - which is of course accurate. 

It’s an interesting conundrum, especially where Power Move is concerned. Let’s hope you have enough days’ data to satisfy the PM police …

Incidentally, ​@BPLightlog mentioned the difference between ‘-’ and ‘0’ in tables like the ones you’re looking at. There’s no standard that I’m aware of, and ‘-’ meaning no data is a common convention. I had a self-imposed power cut between 17:00 and 18:00 on Friday, and that shows up as ‘0’:
    
      {
        "consumption": 0.014,
        "interval": {
          "start": "2025-01-24T16:30:00.000",
          "end": "2025-01-24T16:59:59.999"
        },
        "unit": "kwh"
      },
      {
        "consumption": 0,
        "interval": {
          "start": "2025-01-24T17:00:00.000",
          "end": "2025-01-24T17:29:59.999"
        },
        "unit": "kwh"
      },
      {
        "consumption": 0,
        "interval": {
          "start": "2025-01-24T17:30:00.000",
          "end": "2025-01-24T17:59:59.999"
        },
        "unit": "kwh"
      },
      {
        "consumption": 0.043,
        "interval": {
          "start": "2025-01-24T18:00:00.000",
          "end": "2025-01-24T18:29:59.999"
        },
        "unit": "kwh"
      },
  

Pro tip: to see your three-digit half-hourly usage data for Friday, try this:

1. Visit account.ovoenergy.com and sign in.
     
2. In a new tab in the same browser session, copy this into the address bar:
   
   https:// smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/usage/api/half-hourly/nnnnnnn?date=2025-01-24
     
   Remove the space after // and substitute your own account number for nnnnnnn.
     
3. Depending on your browser, this may produce an impenetrable block of JSON data. You’ll find it easier to decipher if it’s pretty-printed. If your browser doesn’t do this automatically or show a button to enable you to do it manually, there are plenty of online sites that will do it for you, like this one: Best JSON Pretty Print Online. Just copy the whole block of data and paste it into the site’s window. The pretty-printed version will be lower down the page.
     

Would have thought OVO would just honour customers with these outages and assumed they would have made the shift. Algorithms in this case are soulless. 

That’s exactly what I’m asking about. The team doesn’t work weekends but they’re pretty fast at getting back to me once they pick up my messages.

They might do a one-time exception, they might not. We’ll know soon.

Thanks ​@Firedog, I’m not up for delving backstage just now, but attached are what I am now seeing when logging into my online account. Wish I’d screen shot yesterdays  monthly page with the daily total showing as 2.11kWh as opposed to just entering on my spreadsheet. Re your comment about midnight data transfer, nothing normally shows on my account these days until mid/late afternoon. I don’t know about meter batteries but as additional info, once the whole area was devoid of any communication (presumably once mobile mast batteries ran out) until power came on again. (God help us in the future when normal landlines are phased out!) 

As indicated in my initial message, whilst I personally may still be Ok to meet the upper Powermove target I’m raising this as a serious issue to be properly addressed for the  thousands of others who were in the same situation as me. For anyone saying it is a unique occurrence, can I remind them of the storm only a few years ago when large parts of NE Scotland were offline for several days not just 16 hrs. These things do happen and are potentially more frequent these days.

I really look forward to the official OVO response.

Where would you draw the line? If you check any electricity distributor’s website, you should find details of recent power outages. You may be surprised how many there are. OK, there were a lot this weekend, but what about those who suffered power cuts earlier - should Power Move make exceptions for them, too?

A couple of days’ missing data won’t necessarily make much difference to the outcome, given data for the other days in the month. 
 

You didn’t share the meter readings …
  

I don’t think I wrote about ‘midnight data transfer’. Meter readings are stored in the meter at midnight*.  The actual data transmissions (separately for each set of data) take place later on request from OVO, spread out for all the millions of customers over the next 12 or more hours. Your readings may make clear what actually happens during a power outage that spans midnight. I could imagine that the backup battery will chip in to make this storage possible while it’s busily making sure that the internal clock remains accurate.
  

*   … at least for the Aclara meters commonly installed by OVO. From the user manual for my own:
  

Hi ​@iainjp 

Following on from ​@Blastoise186’s reply, I’m going to reach out via Private Message to you, so that I can relay some information to our Power Move team. I look forward to hearing from you.

I’d really like to see what you found …
  

Now that I’ve seen the screenshots of your usage tables, there’s an interesting difference between yours and mine:

• When there is no power to the meter (because of an external power cut), the meter records ‘–’ meaning no data (the transmitted value is probably null);
• When there is no power from the meter (because the house main switch was off), the meter records ‘0’ meaning zero usage (the transmitted value is probably 0).

​@BPLightlog  please note that you were quite right!
  

I’m not great with forum postings and getting replies to right person so all bear with me.

I am now in contact with Ben from ovo.

In response to ​@Firedog  there is no reading for 25th.  I find it strange that the 2 sets of related data (midnight meter reading and hourly usage) appear to used independently and not as back up for each other.    

For anyone suggesting that this issue won’t make any difference, I’ve now just done the arithmetic.  Depending on what figures are, or are not in fact utilised, my Powermove % could go from approx. 4.5% to 8% .  Friday could show as the totally incorrect massive 50% peak usage with Saturdays (off peak use)being cut by a third. On the other hand I may get the standard “insufficient data” excuse

I also find it interesting that when splitting the total, after rounding less is allocated against off-peak Saturday (4.79) than Friday (4.8) !  Enough said!

Obviously anyone else who was already running closer to the cut off could be even worse.