Calculating whether you have hit the 12.5% target or not

I am confused by the “Autumn” FAQ question 10, it’s led to a couple of questions I hope someone here can answer (based on earlier posts, some of you seem to understand this):

Ovo’s FAQ Q: Does my usage for the entire time slot (e.g. 4pm to 7pm) count towards my peak electricity usage?

Ovo’s FAQ A: No, we only measure your electricity usage in half hourly slots, from the beginning of the Power Move time slot until 30 minutes before the end of the time slot. For example, if the challenge time slot was 4 to 7pm then we’d count your usage using the 4pm to 6.30pm half hourly slots. Any electricity used in the 7pm half hourly slot would not be counted towards your 'peak' electricity consumption.

My first question: When I view my daily usage in 30min slots, is the reading at (e.g.) 4pm, telling me how much was used from 3:30-4:00pm, 4:00-4:30pm, or maybe the average of 3:45-4:15? For the sake of my following question I’ll assume 3:30-4:00pm but the principle still applies.

My second question: The above FAQ quote starts with “No”, so telling us it’s not actually 4pm-7pm usage, so when is it? FAQ quotes “...until 30 minutes before the end...” implying that they only take into account 4pm-6:30pm usage, which would only be 2.5 hours and a bit silly (and making the target easier to achieve). But the FAQ then says “...we’d count your usage using the 4pm to 6.30pm half hourly slots...”, which is 6 slots, so 3 hours.

My point: Depending on the answers to the above, is the Autumn “peak” 4pm-7pm challenge, actually using our power measurements from 3:30-6:30pm (or 3:45-6:45pm depending on the answer to my first question)? If so, is everyone being “prudent” at slightly the wrong time? And if not, why does the FAQ answer start with the word “No” to what is a clearly worded FAQ question.

Thanks in advance, sorry for the long post but i wanted to be clear.

Hi @Alandamore Yup, it sure is misleading!

But be assured, howsoever the slots or segments may be described, the crucial 3 hour peak usage segment is the 180 minutes from 1600 hours to 1900 hours, shown in your usage stats as the six half-hourly slots starting at 4PM and ending at 6.30PM. 6.30 here means from 6.30 to 7PM.

Why the “No” I don’t know, because it is the total of this six half-hourly slots that’s in question, but there you are!

That, of course, is only my understanding,  but I’m fairly convinced I have things right.

all the best…. 

You need to add up the half hourly  usage that shows for 16.00 to 18.30 inclusive as 16.00 is for the period 16.00 to 16.30 etc. So 18.30 is for the period 18.30 to 19.00 ie the end of the peak period of the challenge.

I think the no is there because the question says 4 - 7 pm but you dont want the figure at 19.00 because that is for 19.00 to 19.30.

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for the clarifications. Here’s a template for those with Excel (screenshot at the bottom) that you can use for the Autumn 2023 challenge (has my Oct 1st & 2nd data as a worked example) and below is how to download your full (“3 digit”, i.e. exact Watts/30min) data. Could be full of mistakes but yours to play with. This is using info provided by @Jeffus  (thanks!) regarding how to download your 30min readings, in Forum > Ideas > Export to CSV

It takes a few minutes to get your data the first time, but once you’re set up it’s very quick to repeat. No need to manually write or type any data, it can all be downloaded and pasted in (400 days worth). The below might look complicated but it’s simple steps (if you use Excel).

1. Go to https://smarttariffsmartcomparison.org/home and follow the chat bot. You’ll need to enter your postcode and your In Home Display’s GUID (16 hexadecimal digits, on the base or barcode, maybe under battery cover - this is IHD, not the meter’s serial), then create an account (needs email confirmation).
2. It took several minutes before my data was available. Have a coffee, log out and back in, and you should see graphs of your usage. Under the graph, click on the download icon “CSV DATA”. This (in my case) is 400 days of 30min readings.
3. Open this in Excel. The timestamp is “milliseconds since 1970”, the template above will make it readable. It is “oldest first”, you probably want to use Excel to sort it “newest first” (select columns A&B, Data → Sort, tick “my data has headers”, sort by “timestamp”, order “largest to smallest”). Note, it is UTC (=GMT), so the template will “fix” the peak times on any BST dates before the clocks change. This does mean it will only work this Autumn/Winter, and need an edit next year.
4. Select columns A&B from the sorted CSV, copy, and paste over columns A&B in the template above.
5. Delete (option: “shift cells up”) cells in columns A&B for any dates you don’t want to include in the analysis (probably, most of it!)

Hope that helps! Use at your own risk and sorry if it’s full of mistakes (but, it matched my OVO account usage 😀)

@Alandamore Absolutely fabulous, that, great instructions and what a brilliant way to accurately monitor (and record) our data.

Many thanks…

You’ll need to enter your postcode and your In Home Display’s GUID (16 hexadecimal digits, on the base or barcode, maybe under battery cover - this is IHD, not the meter’s serial), 

New to this sort of thing.  Why is it keyed to the identity of the home display (which I thought was a semi-disposable unit) and not some serial number of the meter (which is permanent)?  Is it the same procedure for all such displays (I have an older SSE one, which looks nothing like the IHD’s that OVO have now)?

IHDs can have a CAD (Consumer Access Device) feature whereas the meters do not. Looks like that tool uses the CAD to get in. Either that, or it uses the CAD/GUID as a way of proving ownership of the supply.

Spot on. The IHD is uniquely linked to the meter by its MAC address and so can be used to identify the consumer. The MPxN and indeed MSN might be discoverable by a third party, but only the customer will be able to give the IHD MAC address. This is what n3ergy’s sign-in page says, for example:
 

Thanks for explanations @Firedog @Blastoise186 .  I can see now that the IHD is an authorised terminal (with 1:1 connection to its meter), and not a dumber thing like a light switch or a TV remote.  FWIW I found the EUI in its settings menu. Anyway, let’s see what my data look like.

PS. Lots of specialist terminology variation here! Are these the same thing, or slightly different? Is there a dictionary of these somewhere?

• MPxN
• MAC address (generic to comms tech, e.g. my laptop’s “Ethernet address”?)
• CIN
• EUI-64
• GUID
• CAD