Calculating whether you have hit the 12.5% target or not

Hi,

First thing is to remember that it’s only electricity that counts for Power Move, don’t forget to select “electricity” only if you are a dual fuel customer!

Next, remember to exclude from your calculations your usage during all Saturdays and Sundays (and any Bank Holidays) in the month, as these days are not included for Power Move calculations. 

The most accurate way to work out your percentage is in two stages:

First, add up your total kWh usage for each weekday during the month. The easiest way to do this is let OVO do the work for you:  at the end of the month (or indeed at any stage of the month) go into your “usage” link in your OVO account and add up all the OVO daily totals for your electricity usage for each weekday, skipping weekends and any bank holidays. Call this total “Total weekday usage”.  OVO do show a total usage figure for the month, but of course you can’t use that total as it includes weekends, which you must exclude for Power Move.

Second stage, now add up all your usage for each of the half-hour slots which are listed “after midday” for each weekday in your monthly usage stats, between 4PM and 7PM (that is, the six half-hourly slots in the crucial 4-7 segment: slot 4-4.30PM, 4.30-5.00PM etc. up to and including slot 6.30-7PM) as detailed in your half-hourly smart meter logs, accessible for each day by clicking the blue highlighted kWh total for each of your weekdays. It’s a lot of slots, 30 per week.  Again, don’t forget to look only at electricity, not gas! Call this total “Weekday 4-7 segment usage total”.

Using your calculator (!) divide “Weekday 4-7 segment usage total”  by “Total weekday usage” and multiply your answer by 100. That will give you your percentage total for the month for the crucial 4-7 segment, hopefully a number under 12.5. For example, an easy one would be Weekday 4-7 segment usage total of 40 kWh divided by a Total weekday usage of 400 kWh, equals 1/10, multiply this by 100 which equals 100/10, and gives you the answer of 10 percent. 

Summing daily percentages would be more of a guesstimate, and  even more work as there would be loads of percentage calculations, one for each weekday in the month, plus a final calculation.
 

Long-winded, I know, apologies, hope this helps!!

The only other thing to note is ovo use data to 3 decimal places but we are only given to decimal places, so the ovo figure will always be just slightly under the above calculation. 

True enough @Ria . Also, my example above cited an enormous user of energy, 400 kWh in 20-odd weekdays! Apologies for the carelessness there.

I suppose a slightly easier way for us to check the 12.5% at the end of the month would be to take the OVO total monthly figure for the month and then subtract the OVO figure for our usage for each Saturday, Sunday and any Bank Holiday. Slightly less unwieldy maybe.  
 

And, of course, we”ll make things easier for ourselves (and provide more motivation?) if we check our progress regularly during the month, maybe once or twice a week, and keep a note of our running totals as we go? Easier totalling at month end!

For the agile-minded and better organised amongst us I’ve seen posts from users about keeping a spreadsheet as the month proceeds (which will automatically happily do all our necessary calculations, provided we program it correctly!), and, further, I believe we can now download from OVO a daily CSV file of our half-hourly usage figures.  Remembering, too, your good point about the smart meter readings in such files being to two places of decimals rather than OVO’s final calculations being to three places.

@waltyboy have to laugh, I jot mine down in a book for each relevant day, old school method, saves electricity of a computer ha ha, and i have 2 extra columns of 0.005 off the daily total and the 4-7 total so when i do the cumulative calculation i know i will be between the 2 decimal and the 3 decimal calculation. Sept is my 1st full mth and i was spot on the ovo fig with my version of the 3 decimal figure at the halfway point so be interesting to see if i am at the end of the mth. If so i can drop the 2 decimal figures out of my book! 

@Ria I really admire your meticulousness…the significance (no pun intended!) between two and three places of decimals was something that hadn’t even occurred to me!  For October I’m definitely going to follow your example and start jotting down every day or so the running totals and doing the calculations;; this last month I’ve just been keeping a kind of fluffy percentage approximation in my head, not the best approach!

September will have been my first month of PowerMove, although I only joined on the 7th, so I’ll be interested to see how the calcs are done for part-month usage, and of course whether I hit the target or not…my quick calculations as of yesterday look OK so far, though, so fingers crossed!

In any case, I’m very interested in the whole Power Move thing anyway, and it’s great knowing there’s such a friendly group of fellow-customers sharing the interest.  It was such a relief when I spotted the forum, as I’d had a few questions the FAQ’s didn’t quite address.  This is the first incentive that I’ve been part of where we can actually aim to get cash back for trying to do our bit, and if we don’t make the cut for one month, there’s no penalty and we know we can try again next month.  It has raised my awareness of my precise energy usage, although I’ve always been careful with it anyway: twice daily readings over the last fifteen years (which I still do from force of habit!) even before my smart meter for example, but this half-hourly stuff is brilliant, and the newer IHD which I’ve had for a few months now is, for the first time really, a thoroughly useful tool for me that exceeds any measure I had access to before.

Cheers for now…nearly month-end already; don’t know how Autumn is suddenly on the doorstep quite so quickly!

@waltyboy  i am a low user so thought it would be difficult, but i have switched dinner to lunchtime, if not i wait til after 7 to cook which my stomach grumbles at. 

Need to experiment what half hr of different lights works out at over the weekend as i have ended up in the dark when i havent been in all day, because my usage is so borderline.

 I trialled my Aug figures initially before joining and was about 1.5% over without being conscious but then lighter nights i didnt mind eating later anyway and was outside more, but at the moment im 10.34% on 2 figs and 10.15% on 3 figures so 1 more day to add i reckon ive cracked it!

Its definitely made me more conscious and motivated to do chores especially anything electrically powered up to 4pm after that its what i call my time!

@Ria my tummy wouldn’t allow me to wait until 7!
 

I wonder whether you can time your oven to start cooking at, say, 3.30 or 3.40, as a lot of the oven’s expense will be during the initial 15 mins or so when the element is getting the oven up to 180 or 220 or whatever? Once it’s up to heat, it then just clicks in and out to keep the temperature up.

Be nice to come home to all that lovely hot dinner! Mind you, I understand how some folk might worry about the oven being on while they’re out, but modern wiring and appliances are pretty reliable…if one’s not confident oneself it’s nearly always possible to get a knowledgeable friend/neighbour/relative to check the condition of the consumer unit (“fuse box”) and the cabling etc., or actually hire a friendly electrician, of course.

Good luck!

I think it is best to do the calculation daily, only takes a minute . Write it on the calender no need for spreadsheets. Instant feedback!

If you leave it longer the time to process the calculations becomes a pain and if you leave it until the end of the month its a bit like shutting the stable door after the  proverbial horse has bolted.

Keep it simple, smart.

Just got my end of mth ovo email and my (fig 1) daily figure and (fig 2) 4-7pm (i.e. 6.30) figures taken from the app with 0.005 taken off each of them has worked out exactly to the % calculation (cumulative fig2 divided by cumulative fig 1 to 2 decimal places) on the ovo email.

Cracked it, no need to jot down the 2 decimal figures anymore for fig1 &2.