Entering 3 hour Power Move Flex event (5pm till 8pm) - will this adversely affect Power Move power down time (5pm till 7pm)?

I compromised: normal ‘essential usage only’ between 5pm and 7pm, then went wild with 7p energy from 7pm to 8pm. Of course, I forgot to switch everything off again at 8pm - but luckily remembered before ten past. Let’s see whether it paid off.

While marked as an answer, this really isn’t.

The real question is: We were asked to power up during a time that we are normally / routinely asked to power down, will this usage in the one-off power up event penalise our score for the routine power down?

Following other discsussions about how events affect baseline calculations (e.g. 

), and the link there to the methodology for calculating the baseline (https://www.neso.energy/document/286981/download) (i.e. days with power up or down events are excluded from basline calculations for future events). By analogy then, it seems as though the power up event 5-8 pm on 20th March *should* be excluded from calculations of people’s monthly peak usage for power move. Certainly that would be the honest approach.

From looking at my power move figures, it seems as this has not occurred, and the usage was counted towards the monthly figure.

Hey ​@addiki 

The final section you quoted below from Ben, direct from the Power Move team, does indeed explain the answer to your question:

It will be counted so it will always be best to check on your Power Move progress before deciding whether a Flex event is suitable for you to take part in.

I hope this helps.

Unfortunately not, because you’ve missed the fact that while I “gently” asked a question, I was really making a complaint.

At any one time, you either want me to use more power or less power. Normally in the 5-7 time period you want me to use less power (habitual), however, on the 20th March, it was a quite sunny day, and so you wanted me to power down - you even sent me a text saying so.

And so to encourage me to power down, you penalised me for it. And I’m complaining about that.

As I mentioned above, there is precedent for PMF events not being included in baseline calculations, and that *should* be the case here - you wanted me to deviate from my habitual behaviour (of reducing power use in peak hours); PMF should override PM. I understand that it is *not* the case and because it is not the case, my opinion of your honesty as a company is reduced.

If you notice another thread that I started (Show target for Power Down events in Power Move Flex), this was also about your honesty as a company. By not telling me my target, even after the event, you have the ability to, well, basically cheat. You could invite me to power down at a time where I use minimal power anyway, so it is therefore difficult to reduce power usage and therefore I am likely to fail the event.

I don’t think it is difficult to tell me what my target is/was - you obviously have the data. I suspect that you are not disclosing it as part of the multi-way experiment that you are running - if I knew clearly that my maximum reward for an event was (e.g.) 2p, then I am unlikely to bother - so you don’t tell me.

But this has happened - I have been invited to power down at times where we are normally using battery power - so I already have some suspicion about being invited to these events. If you were to show me the data, that I could check, that would allow me to either point out and get you to correct the error, or find that there is none and that your calculations are correct and honest (best case).

So, what I’m saying overall, is that I appreciate you (and other energy companies) are runnng several experiments in population behaviour modification with respect to energy use. What I urge you to understand and rectify moving forward, is that some of the behaviours (obscuring data and unfairly resolving contradictory directives) that OVO has exhibited, affect not only my opinion of the various power move schemes, but my opinion of OVO more generally.

Hey ​@addiki,

Thank you for your feedback, I’ve passed this on to the Power Move team 🙂

...so you wanted me to power down UP - you even sent me a text saying so.

And so to encourage me to power down UP, you penalised me for it….

Hi ​@Emmanuelle_OVO,

As above - I’m sure you’ve got what I was meaning, but it would make more sense if you correct the two lines in my feedback (delete the underlined “down” in two cases and replace with the word “up”)

Hi ​@addiki 

It's what I've been saying for sometime about adding complexity to solve issues. I'm probably right in saying that these two initiatives, Power Move and Power Move Flex stem from two different sources. Power Move is an OVO initiative and Power Move Flex stems from NESO’s Demand Flexibility Service (DFS) and because of that they do not necessarily align even through they try to solve a similar issue. It's trying to reconcile the fact that most of the time it is better to power down during the peak period but, just occasionally, when there is a lot of renewables on the grid, powering up is the cheaper option as the National Grid then doesn't have to spend enormous sums of money having to pay for ‘curtailment’ of renewables because that is written into the contract between the NG and the generators of renewable energy.

What is broken is the NG pretending it can incorporate renewables into an existing system and hoping it will be ok. We are all paying for this mistake. You have every right to complain to OVO but OVO can't fix that. You could try talking to your MP about NG’s mis-management of our power supply system but it has now got so complex I doubt if they will understand the situation or have any idea what to do with that.

Peter

PS There are tariffs (a particularly bad word for today for other reasons) out there that do take advantage of this situation without having to compromise. Have the freedom of thought to choose a tariff that suits your lifestyle taking into account all the relevant factors that apply. Hint: Search for wholesale tariffs