Strange - my notification was for a Power Down event, which sounds likely, given what many customers will be doing at that time. There’s a possibility, I suppose, that participants who historically have higher or lower than average usage in a particular time slot are invited to reverse that behaviour. However, that’s not what happened in my case - my usage 12:00-14:00 on Sundays is typically about 150W, so I might have expected a Power Up request, which I didn’t get.

So how do I get someone in OVO to answer my question  ?

Hi @DuncanL,

I’ve checked this with the team who’ve responded saying they can be dependent on where you live. There are some events where Scotland will power up and the rest of the country will power down.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for that info.  I am not sure why they would want to have a Power Up when everyone is cooking Sunday lunch but perhaps they wanted to use up some wind power in north of Scotland.

We ask @Chris_OVO to ping his tame Power Move contact 🙂

… and …

Hey @DuncanL @Firedog,

I asked and got the response below that’ll add some more context for you 😄

“It's a trial so different areas have different usage profiles and also different constraints, as some have better infrastructure so as it's a trial, we're also testing if different areas can give different signals and requests at the same time as others and notifications going out at the same time for Power Up and Power Down”

Hopefully this answers your questions! If you have any follow up questions please let me know and I can get some answers for you.

Thanks for your help and explanation.   I was aware it was just a trial but didn’t realise they were testing differently in different areas.

I actually queried the matter with OVO Customer Service yesterday who said they would pass it to Power Flex Team - I hope they are not getting a bit fed up at having to reply to the same query several times !

If they tell me anything more or different, I will post it here.  

I had a notification yesterday at about 11:00 of a Power Down event from 12:00 to 12:30. Although my reactions may not be as quick as they once were, they were never fast enough for that. 

As it is, my average usage 12:00-12:30 for the previous 14 working days was 39Wh, so even if I’d thrown the master switch, I would only have earned 0.039kWh x £0.50 = £0.02 and saved £0.01. Much ado about threepence.

You are forgetting that if you saved the slightest amount that would have been considered “successful” and if you are successful in 50% of events, you earn £3.   It is one of the things in this trial which seems a bit daft - last month I didn’t really take part in some of the events as, like you, my consumption was so low there seemed nothing to gain.  By sheer chance, my consumption was a fraction lower in 2 of them gaining me only 1p each time but I ended up getting the £3 reward.