Here’s a sneak peak look at a possible change to the OVO app - tell us what you think

I presume there’s no voice over - I could get anything. Perhaps screen commentary might help the viewing for this 

I couldn’t tell if you could still get to a breakdown of each day/week etc as you could when I last looked. That’s important as many years compare today with yesterday or the same day last week (eg Tuesday might have a different pattern to other days so comparing Tuesdays might be more useful).

If by similar homes, it is meant similar size; bedrooms, occupancy etc then some will find it useful. Some comparisons make odd compares such as compared to the ‘average’ home .. whatever that means

The key to this part is the accuracy. If the usage within the category is fairly accurate, then the comparison might also be - typical usage will depend on a number of factors , occupancy, home during day, lifestyle. The bar colouring could be a guide .. darker colours ; higher usage

Whilst these updates will aid some, the baseline to get data granularity which can then be manipulated and viewed to best help the particular user needs to be the goal. That’s still why I use a variety of views from different packages, all driven by the base data provided by my account API

Thanks for the view

My preference is for viewing charts against previous periods, with an EV charger this pushes Electric use up it would appear in comparison to similar homes, unless that is taken into consideration as part of similar home. 

Its an insightful app and I like the features though would be good to include the ‘Your EV’ as you have on the Ovo Portal.

I’m only interested in comparing my own usage against my usage in different times e.g. previous month, previous year. I see no benefit in comparing with similar households.

I see no benefit in the breakdown of usage into different categories this doesn’t interest me. 
I assume the tips for reducing usage would be the same as on the website - I haven’t found these to be of any use to me so I don’t think I’d think much of the ones on the app.

the charts themselves look clear and easy to navigate which is good, I do like to be able to switch between price and volume used on these charts as it allows you to see the effect of price changes.

It’s a little tricky for me, but I’d say comparing with similar homes would be nice to have, as long as there are actual “similar” homes to compare against. My unusual usage patterns might limit the value for me though.

With that said, I do find the tips and categories in the concepts more helpful than they currently are!

Apart from click sound effects, there is no explanation or other sounds. I can see you have tried to estimate the usage in various categories based on “similar” houses but do you have any idea if there are smart devices which turn appliances on and off according to systems such as Home Assistant or the like. How can the “similar” house use a consistent amount of electricity or gas every single day with what looks like no variation due to type of day - weekday or weekend, bank holiday, weather conditions  or any other variations? I find some of the estimates of what we are doing is wildly off the mark, so doubt that they are likely to improve in the near future.

Thanks everyone, it’s super helpful to get this insight. Our Product seem are seeing this and may jump in with some follow up questions or context. 

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you @waiwurrie @John12345 @Mal1955 @tony1tf @andrewpbclarke 

At first glance I like the new layout, I don’t use the app much if I’m being honest. Lots going on, but it’s all very clearly laid out. I haven’t set up the insight part yet but may do now. Being able to compare to similar homes might be a good thing.  

First - is this in the OVO Energy app, or OVO Beyond? Or for when Beyond is incorporated into the principal app? 

A few comments:

• I wouldn’t use a phone for this sort of thing. That’s probably just me, but I’d always use a big screen wherever possible.
• I’m very suspicious of the ‘similar homes’ data without knowing how they’re identified. There are undoubtedly as many different usage patterns as there are ‘detached 1- bedroom bungalows’, but probably not that many ‘200-year-old stone-walled gas-free 1-bedroom cottages in the East Midlands with a single vegetarian occupant home all day not using electricity for heating.’ This devalues the comparisons for me. 
• Does telemetry indicate that most users concentrate on cost rather than consumption? I wonder how the comparative costs are arrived at, and I can’t see how they could be helpful without knowing. It could be that an 🛈 pop-out could explain, but we can’t see this in the video. 
• Similarly, comparisons by date (‘same date last month’) aren’t much use. Comparing 21 April with 21 March is pretty meaningless for most households, since one is a Thursday and the other a Sunday. 
• It would be helpful if days of the week were shown on the bar charts. A suggestion I’ve made before: make each ‘month’ chart 35 days wide. The extra days could either be populated if data are available, or left blank. This would make ‘month-on-month’ comparisons much more meaningful if days of the week matched up.

[I seem to have ignored your questions; feel free to ignore my responses in return 🙂]

Hi @Firedog ,  

These are all very valid points and we can take them away and try and get you some more answers. I think it’s good to open this up as a discussion as it can help us understand changes from your perspective. 

If you have any follow up points we would be happy to hear them! 

I will get back to you when we know more.

Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate your input — it really does help understand how we can improve this feature!

@andrewpbclarke @BPLightlog @Blastoise186 @Guy Crosby @Firedog you called out not knowing what is meant by ‘similar homes’ or it not being clear enough. 

We’ve tried to explain what we mean when we say ‘similar homes’ with this overlay — this would be accessed from the Usage graph, as shown with the pink dot on the second screen.

We’ve categorised them by a few attributes: 

• Region (there has to be a minimum of 500 properties in an area with similar attributes)
• Property type (Bungalow is combined with Detached)
• Number of bedrooms
• Heating type (Elec only, Gas only or dual fuel)
• EV ownership (if a customer owns an EV, we will compare their usage to other EV owners)

Would this would help you understand how OVO is identifying similar homes to compare against? 

Do you have any more thoughts on how this could be improved? 

Thanks again!
 

@Firedog you had some really interesting points you shared and I’d love to find out a bit more about them if you can help. 

We would also be releasing an overlay that explains “How we calculate your energy use”. Can you please let us know if this is what you expected or if there’s anything that seems unclear?

You raised an interesting point about comparing the same days (instead of the same date) last month. I.e. comparing Tuesday to Tuesday for different time periods. Can you please explain why you think this would be more valuable than comparing the same date?
 

Hi @Alex SL_OVO , my main issue with a comparison to ‘similar’ homes is that without everything taken into account, the comparison becomes somewhat irrelevant. 
Take a home with the similarities you suggest and then a different occupancy level, age range, in all day vs mainly out at work/school .. the difference I would suggest could be very large. 
If there was a tick box selection for most individual segments which then allowed some better representation, that would help but I fear that it would become quite complex. 
That’s even without looking at heating methods (Gas, Storage heating, Heat pump), solar PV, etc

Mornin Alex! :D

I think that makes a lot more sense in general… But I can still throw a spanner in the works and jam up the system. :)

For this, I’ve grabbed my EPC report. The EPC Rating is B and my total floor area is 49 square metres.

And

The way my flat works means it’s actually almost impossible to reliably compare it against basically anywhere else. The community/communal heating system means that pretty much none of the eco juice that powers my heating runs via my supply nor meter and therefore kinda skews your calculations a bit! :)

It may be worth having that as an option for example, so that it’s more accurate.

Some food for thought in the comparison item. I do think though that getting down to the level of granularity would be too much for most people to deal with. If it gives a degree of comparison then it may help somewhat. For an example, I use a smart thing application that comes with my appliances, it told me this week that my energy levels have risen dramatically compared to last month. Great, I thought it knows my daughter is home from University and that I have just spent the last 4 days doing a tonne more washing and drying than I usually do.  That info along with the OVO information is valuable in me knowing I am due to pay a lot more on my electricity bill in the next cycle. Not one app can give you all the answers but working together with other information streams will provide a good level of detail overall. 

While Firedog considers his response, I though I might give my take on comparing usage:

I use various data feeds via Hugo, Bright, Loop and SmartThings as none show me exactly what I want to see. 
One reason to view a day against its predecessor (Tuesday vs Tuesday) is that in many cases on a given weekday, the same sequence of events often happen; similar usage patterns therefore occur. The Bright app coupled with the Hildebrand Glow IHD allows this type of view and allows comparisons to previous days and previous weeks 

😴

TIL ‘overlay’ 🙂

It’s fair enough comparing one household’s consumption with another’s, given the limitations of the ‘similar homes’ assessment. Comparing the size of their bills is perhaps a step too far when there are such wide variations in usage patterns and tariffs. While the division of consumption into buckets is still largely guesswork, I can’t see any value in a cost comparison.

@BPLightlog has covered this in his earlier reply. The owner of the usage pages already seems to use an algorithm based on week-on-week consumption patterns when populating estimated daily usage charts, so this variation is recognized. In a specific household, there is most probably a recognizable pattern of weekday consumption, meaning that comparing Sunday usage this month with Thursday last month is pretty meaningless in many cases.  

It should be fairly simple to adjust the bar charts so that instead of having the 1st of the month at the left-hand end and a variable number of bars, have a constant number - say six weeks’-worth - starting with the Monday next before the 2nd of the month.

I made this suggestion sometime last year, but I can’t find it now. This is the mock-up I showed then:
  

I’ve no idea whether anyone who matters is still watching this topic, but I’ll post here regardless.

1. There is a wild discrepancy between what the website’s Insights pages say similar homes use and what the OVO Beyond app says. OK, the web gives averages to the nearest 10Wh while the app makes do with a more realistic nearest kWh, but the differences are striking nevertheless. 
     
2. I wonder why most of the time my home’s trend is opposite to everyone else’s - my consumption tends to rise when others’ fall and vice versa. OK, my low usage is susceptible to blips resulting from a single event (an extra shower can double the day’s consumption, for example). Even so, the graph below shows some strange movements:
     

The Insights peaks in week 10 and 16 don’t seem to have affected the OVO Beyond figures. I wonder why?

@Alex SL_OVO 

I’ll forward this on, thanks @Firedog 

Hi @Firedog thanks for your message — I’m still looking at this, so appreciate you sharing your thoughts/questions.

I can’t say why your specific home has such large discrepancies, but it’s interesting that the similar homes lines are moving in different directions. I’ve shared it with the team and will see what info I get — I’ll keep you posted.

That was quick! Thanks, @Alex SL_OVO 

Just to pre-empt a possible objection, I retrieved the OVO Beyond figures on Monday to be sure of getting an ISO-8601 week’s data.

The trends I’m curious about include:

Week 1-3 - Beyond rising, Insights falling
Week 8-9 - Beyond rising, Insights falling
Week 9-10 - Beyond falling, Insights rising markedly
Week 13-16 - Beyond falling, Insights rising, markedly in the last week

There must be some fundamental difference in the parameters applied, so it would be interesting to know what they are - and why they’re different. 

I realize that I’m not any sort of ‘normal’ energy consumer, so I wouldn’t expect to see any sort of close correlation between me and everybody else. I would, however, expect to see similar trends over a period of weeks, influenced by factors like outside temperature and amount of daylight (derived from solar PV returns, for example). 

And a last thought: I’m signed up for the OVO Power Move challenge, so it’s not unreasonable to deduce that my lower consumption from week 14 onwards partly reflects a change in behaviour to minimize usage between 6 and 9 PM - e.g. not switching the TV on. That can make a significant difference to the daily total for a low user like me.

Fascinating stuff!

@Alex SL_OVO Just FYI, I’ve gone public with a post (including a new, prettier graphic 🙂) about this discrepancy: 
  

I wonder if anyone else is seeing the same phenomenon.