A debate on marginal pricing and incentives to move energy usage to weekday off peak times

Hi @SunnySideUp 

I think that what you are getting from solar reduces your off-peak usage, which then affects your Power Move percentage.

You should have done the large oven baking on a weekday, outside of 4-7 of course.

That way it would have counted in Power Move as weekday usage outside 4-7, thus offsetting and so reducing the percentage used within 4-7.

Usage at weekend and Bank Holidays doesn’t count in Power Move.

I normally bake small things like biscuits, bread rolls/buns, and yes I’m planning some mince pasties (as a change from pies), in the Air Fryer now.
It uses less energy because the baking times are reduced and of course it’s smaller so doesn’t take as much energy to get to temperature. (I don’t even bother to pre-heat it).
Of course being smaller you may have to bake in batches but you still win out overall.
I’ll also do pastry crusts in the AF and drop them on top of microwaved stews, etc.

Larger things like full loaves or larger cakes do still go in the electric oven, but on a weekday where the energy used will count towards Power Move as off-peak usage so in your favour.

I agree with @Nukecad above but the whole thing is confusing if you don't understand the aim and the underlying mathematics behind the Power Move so here are two simple rules that I stick to and I'm well on track for my third £15 payment.

For the sake of your finances take care to reduce your usage of electricity, particularly a lot of low wattage devices that are on all the time and don't need to be on all the time. Even an internet router can take 10W if it's an old model. TV masthead amplifier is another one which is often forgotten. And there will be others. If you have a smart meter with an In House Display then track these vampires down so that you are at least aware of them.

If you have any heavy duty loads, oven, washing machine, tumble drier etc make sure the are ONLY used WEEKDAY and OUTSIDE the PEAK. Sorry for the caps but both of those conditions are absolutely essential to make your In-Peak usage look small by comparison to fit under the 13.5% threshold. Heavy duty usage at the weekend is not your friend. Heavy weekend usage does not help make the peak, weekday usage look smaller because it is not included in the calculations.

You may not agree with the way this scheme is set up but it a case of the Golden Rule. Thems with the gold makes the rules.

Happy vampire hunting and load shifting.

There are two reasons why you shouldn’t consider turning off your internet router:

The first is general for anybody - If you keep turning your router off and on then the monitoring software at your supplier thinks there is a fault on the line that is cutting the connection.
So it ‘throttles’ (slows down) your broadband to try and compensate for the ‘fault’.

Second is for Power Move - If your router is on 24/7 then its using the same wattage off-peak as on-peak, which is 21 hours outside Power Move hours and only 3 hours inside them.
That’s 12.5% so  doesn’t affect Power move that much at all, you can think of such constant background usage as being neutral for Power Move.
Generally if it is on all then time then you can forget about it for Power Move.
The same goes for fridges which are on constantly, but not quite for cental heating pumps because most people have those on timers which are switched off for several hours overnight so that’s not the same as being on 24/7.

PS. Wifi routers use the same power whether anything is connected to them or not. they still send out wireless signals all the time which uses the same power whatever that wireless signal is carrying.
Whether it’s streaming a film or just asking ‘I’m here does anything want to connect’ the routers wireless signal uses the same power.

Being honest, if you are down to trying to save 10 watts here and 10 watts there to meet the Power Move target then I’d suggest that you are not going to do it. andthat Power Move may not be for you.

@Nukecad

Thank you. I should have made that a bit clearer in that it wasn't a suggestion that you turn the router on and off. It was the point that there are a lot of devices around the house that can take a significant amount of energy over a year when switched on 24/7 and maybe you don't give them a second thought. Go and have the vampire hunt.

As a side issue I have an EE router that is switched off daily between 12 midnight and 5am. This has two effects. It saves a bit of energy when nothing is using it and secondly it gets a reboot every morning and this has fixed one of the issues I have with the legacy Orange (remember them) software that is incorporated into these devices. Namely, after a few days they can go dumb and they need a reboot anyway. I don't have any issues with my ISP thinking that there is a fault with the line and reducing my download speed. It is possible that other ISPs may react differently but generally routers measure the signal to noise ratio (SNR) second by second and adjust the speed accordingly.

BTW: Switching the router off when off peak actually works against me achieving my taget but I pass with a sufficient margin that retaining this practice is still ok and it saves a small amount of power as well.

I understand why people are suggesting moving heavy duty loads from weekend to weekdays to achieve a benefit from these schemes. However, weekend electricity generations is almost always ’greener’ than weekdays so this is backfiring on anyone wanting to help achieve lower emissions.☹️🌍

@juliamc You're absolutely right. It's a choice between greener or cheaper for most of the time and you have to make a choice between them.

I am running a 24 yo gravity boiler (non-condensing) that is still going strong. To change to a condensing boiler that is 15% more efficient I would have to spend £3-4k for a boiler and a large amount of disruptive plumbing which will take about 20 years to pay back with the increased efficiency and will only last about 15 years on average.

I looked at a heat pump, paid for a survey and the quote came back at a staggering £16k! £8.5k after the £7.5k HP grant with even more plumbing changes.

The path to being green is fraught with financial challenges. I don't see it going particularly well myself.

Hey @juliamc and @Peter E,

It’s a good point you’ve made and I've fed this back to the team. OVO are always assessing the impact of Power Move and looking at new ways to iterate in order to maximise the positive environmental impact and the customer experience. It may be that the proposition is adapted in the future to try and overcome this obstacle. 

I’ll keep you posted if I hear any more updates about this issue 😊

Thank you @Emmanuelle_OVO  for offering to do that but the issue goes back further than Ovo into the way the electricity supply industry is set up with Marginal Pricing, investments and back to people again.

This is my understanding of the situation - please correct me if I’m wrong – on any of this. There are simplifications and generalisations in here as well.

Marginal pricing means that all the cheapest possible sources of electricity will be used, and the wholesale electricity price will be set by the price of the last selected offer, to meet demand.

This means at peak demand, when the most expensive power source is being used (possibly coal) all of the power supplied to Ovo and other operators will be that of the most expensive source. Ovo has to pay the marginal price and has to sell at the tariff. They make a profit off-peak and a loss at peak times. To cut the loss at peak times they offer an incentive to customers to reduce their peak demand thereby reducing their loss and rewarding the customer for meeting the criteria for doing that.

The peak demand at the weekend is nothing like as big so the losses to Ovo are somewhat reduced and may not exist at all. There is no financial reason why Ovo (or other companies) to offer an incentive for including weekends. The fundamental issue is the setup of the electricity production market is based on marginal pricing.

My further understanding is that since the recent massive increase in fuel prices it has been recognised that the model for wholesale prices based on marginal pricing is broken (extremely costly to the user) and needs to be fixed. However, the contracts for renewable energy were let on this premise and they will run for some considerable period of time before they expire thereby baking he problem in.

So why were the renewable generators offered a contract based on the marginal price model in the first place?

Because they can print money like it is going out of fashion, at the peak, on a freezing but windy day. The prospect of this, in turn, gives investors the reason to fund the renewables in the first place. Without the high returns investors will look elsewhere. No ‘print money’ contract no renewables investment. So it comes down to funding investments in renewables where there is more of a focus on the green credentials and less on the rate of return. Since peoples’ occupational pension funds make up a sizeable proportion of investments it means people advising their pension investment managers that you will accept the risk of a lower pension in return for investing in green projects. Without guidance pension fund managers are duty bound to maximise returns. You can see one of the problems right there but I believe that ethical investing is increasing. But we are stuck where we are at the moment.

My apologies for the long read but the move to a greener future is not going to be without cost and it is going to take time. I think Ovo have done well to introduce the Power Move scheme although it doesn’t work for everybody but the winter scheme is more flexible and should be more inclusive without making it too complex.

Peter

It varies a lot, Julia, as you well know. It’s quite possible that a load of washing done on Sunday evening will generate more CO₂ than the same load done on Monday morning. Those really keen to minimize their CO₂ emissions should keep an eye on, say, ESO’s forecast regardless of the attraction of the PM prize. One thing is pretty certain, though: a load of washing (or, God forfend, tumble-drying) done during the night will be greener than one done during the day.

That’s a fairly simple decision. When to bake or hoover is trickier, but the same applies. Even if 6AM or 10PM are out of the question for this sort of activity, it’s still possible to time them for minimal CO₂ impact during the week. So I can’t see shifting usage from weekends to weekdays as inherently anti-social, and if it pays my standing charge, I’ll keep on doing it 😊   

I suppose the ultimate is to go with Octopus Agile - it looks like they’ll pay customers to use electricity in the small hours tonight (graph from www.energy-stats.uk)

Car plugged in ready for a 3 hour burst tonight, costing 9p p kWh for my tariff.