Nonsensical target for Power Move Plus

You’ll normally get a message at https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview if your stuff is deleted. I get loads of them about reports I’ve made which were dealt with.

What I will say is that your comment may have been reported by one of us forum volunteers while we were patrolling the forum. It was not my report, so I can’t tell you who may have done so.

If you think you missed it OR you want to appeal: forum@ovoenergy.com is the place to take up the matter with the forum moderators.

Thanks, but I am already thinking this forum, like so many, is not worth the bother, like the Power Move targets.

I will now just continue with my official complaint through the recognised channels.

@decroisic  got my Power Move Plus results too!  

I had the same target of 0.1kwh and my 5-6pm usage on the day was 0.07kwh. I sat with nothing on but my absolute overnight basics of fridge/freezer, router and alarm clock which adds up to 0.07kwh, so thought i will get under by 0.03kwh therefore expecting 9p.

However not the case.  I added up the 5 &5.30 pm figures for 10 weekdays of 1/11 to 14/11 (day before the email invite) which came to 1.37 ÷10 so average 0.14kwh. On the day actual for the hour was as expected at 0.07kwh and so I dropped 0.07 x £3 which gave me 21p!

More than my predicted extra brussel sprout🤣

So now i understand the calculation for next time.

Still cant get my Power Move mid month calculation to match, yet i always match the end of month calculation, so can only think that they take a different point in the day rather than end of a day.

Yeah way to go @Ria  - we got 21p :)  and much more than you were expecting! And as I was out for the hour it was 21p for free in my mind. Hopefully we will get an invite to a Power-move plus event at a time  outside of Power-move times and then we may even get close to getting a pound or 2! :) 

Mine was spot on. The figure in the email was 5.47%, and my own calculations showed 5.472% for the period 1-15 November (11 weekdays). 

How far out was the figure you were told?

@Firedog its 0.09% out. Never sure what date they go to but you saying 15th helped but im still out, yet end of mth always matches. Im also slightly outside target too. Amazing really as i ended up 11.54% for oct and ive now got a heater on for 2 separate hours in the early hours in an outbuilding trying to keep it around 10 degrees and nothing else changed apart from one day i got back from hosp with my dad and just couldnt wait til 7pm to start cooking dinner! However, 16th and 17th ive got back under so just need to stay there! Not dipping out on my £15!🤣

That’s not unlikely if you’re only working from the website/app figures which are rounded to two decimal places. It’s too much of an error though, and there’s something amiss, if you’re using three-decimal numbers most smart meters produce and which are available through various subterfuges.

Actually I have noticed that they are truncated and not rounded.

For example I know that my background use is 18-19 watts (0.018-0.019 kWh).
That’s devices that always run and never switch off, (smoke alarms, CH boiler timer, router, etc.), so my usage is never less than that.

In a half hour period where nothing but background is running (say the middle of the night) that shows on the website as truncated to 0.01 kWh rather than rounded to 0.02 kWh.

eg. I know that the three 0.01 kWh here cannot be correct, they have been truncated from 0.019. (the 0.04 and 0.05 will be the fridge kicking in for short periods).

PS. My half way email for November is 0.1% higher than my own 2-DP calculation to the end of last week, so about the same discrepancy as @Ria is seeing.

That's all those little 0.009's adding up in the OVO 3-DP calculation, but not there in my own 2-DP calc.

(Edit- I just had an interesting thought.
If I can add another 1 or 2 watts to my always-on background load then that will make it 20-21 watts, which the 2-DP online should then report as 0.02 kWh thus making my own 2-DP calculations more in line with the OVO 3-DP calc).

Hey @Lizziekent,

Sorry for any confusion, I can see your comment wasn’t deleted or removed. It is still on the topic, I think what may have happened was it was flagged as spam, which happens automatically. We then manually approved it. 

It is worth noting that power move plus is voluntary, you don’t have to partake in the scheme. 

Power move plus is OVO’s name for the ESOs DFS scheme, and we’re following rules from the ESO:

What is Power Move Plus?

This winter, OVO is offering customers even more chances to save. We’re taking part in the Electricity Systems Operator (ESO)’s Demand Flexibility Service to help customers reduce their bills this winter and reduce demand on the grid at peak times.

How does Power Move Plus work with Power Move?

We’re offering customers even more chances to be rewarded. You can take part in both Power Move and Power Move Plus to supercharge your savings this winter. 

With Power Move, we challenge you to shift your non-essential electricity use to times when the grid is greenest. We set new challenges with different monthly targets every three months, and at the end we reward you with energy credit for hitting the target. 

Power Move Plus offers you even more chances to be rewarded, with shorter, one off events. You’ll receive a personal target with each Power Move Plus event and be rewarded based on how much electricity you shift below the target.

Why am I being rewarded for shifting my usage out of a high price time period?

When everyone’s using power, and demand on the UK’s energy grid is high, there’s less renewable power (such as solar or wind) to go around. This means dirty fossil fuel generators need to be switched on to fill the gap to keep the lights on in the UK.

By shifting your non-essential electricity use away from peak times, you’re reducing the demand on the grid and our dependence on fossil fuels. You’ll be using electricity at times where the grid is likely to be greener.

And are still running our own ‘power move’ alongside power move plus which has rewards set by OVO:

The objective of the scheme is to help encourage customers to move usage out of peak times, reducing pressure on the grid, meaning less fossil fuels are burned. 

The suggestion that OVO have tricked their customers into cutting power usage goes against our community guidelines 5.1(a) which can be found below:

Well my complaint has been met 100% by an excellent OVO response!

A review took place into the facts and OVO have admitted errors have taken place in the calculations I complained about. I have received £50 compensation that fully covers the amount of “rewards” I expected. Great Customer Service and hopefully that could lead to.any other errors being rectified.

I’m not sure you’re right there. I just compared a few figures from yesterday morning:
  

More ups than downs in that sample. If you can tell me why 0.025 becomes 0.03 while 0.015 becomes 0.1, I’ll be very happy 😊

Perhaps there’s a fourth digit somewhere 

Just to clarify, as I have earlier stated, my complaint to OVO has.been fully justified.  Today  they recognised “errors” had been made and have credited £50 to my account.

Full marks to the Customer Service guys at OVO They acted very swiftly to answer my emails and obviously carried out a full investigation of the  facts. You have to respect that, and I will be staying with. OVO.

 They

Wow, I've not seen that suggested before.

It's always an interesting mathematical question whether 0 5 should be rounded up or down. Pick your mathematical system and take your choice?

TBH though if we are into the realms of 4 decimal places vs 4 significant figures - the difference is not going to impact in any significant way on the Power Move percentages

0.5 should always be rounded up I was taught ✏️

@Firedog 

@BPLightlog 

@Nukecad 

I sometimes see discrepancies between the following figures, and not just rounding up/down:

1. Total daily figure on app to the total in the half hourly breakdown

2. The daily figures can also be different again on the monthly part of the app.

3. Different daily figures when logging into the website too.

When you are a low user and close to the target these discrepancies can make a difference to the final % figure and your £15.

Now that I'm using a light in a room I'm finding I'm closer to the target with little to no change in what i was doing in Sep.

It would be nice to see exactly the same figures in all locations, or at least one location for the consciously detailed minded, that Ovo work too.

Is that possible?

That’s what the tax man says. There’s also the so-called ‘bankers’ rounding’, which relieves part of the bias that always rounding 0.5 up introduces (this system rounds 0.5 to the nearest even number, so 0.5 > 0, 1.5 > 2, 2.5 >2, 3.5 > 4 etc.). Neither of these explains why 0.025 becomes 0.03 while 0.015 becomes 0.1. I suspect it’s a result of the way decimal numbers are stored in binary systems.

Possibly not. 
Details on the app - and possibly the web - are estimations and not used for billing or other significant purposes (including Power Move I would suggest).

This is probably why it takes quite a while to validate figures. 
I agree that it would be useful to see for yourself so that the figures can be self validated but I’m not sure that is possible in this situation .. 

Just for context 

The daily figure on the monthly tab on the usage page is calculated from the registers on your smart meter. These are the figures on the meter reading page on the website

https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings/history/electricity

The 30 min consumption data is different. This is stored on your smart meter as consumption amounts every 30min

The 30min data isn't added up to make the daily amount on the meter or by ovo.

There can be a difference for a variety of reasons for example a data transmission issue with one of the 30min data slots.

We aren't  currently billed using the 30min data, or in fact anything on the usage page, only what is on the meter reading page.

I think you’ll find that the daily total figures are derived from the meter readings - today’s less yesterday’s gives yesterday’s usage. The total of a day’s half-hour usage quantities should be very close to that figure, assuming that both are calculated to the meter’s degree of reporting accuracy - nowadays the nearest whole Wh.

I have been keeping track of my half-hourly usage figures since my new meter was installed in September. If I add up every one of those 2618 numbers (running to midnight last night), I get 160.582 kWh. The meter readings reported on the website (there are two each day, for peak and offpeak usage) are 138.831 and 21.754, totalling 160.585. I can live with a 3 Wh discrepancy (0.002%).

@Firedog

Last night i went through the 3DP meter readings and they round up to the totals when you go into the half hrly daily break down table at the top. Also showed that rounding up is as per normal 5 to 9 goes up a digit and 4 and under stays the same.

However i still dont match the ovo mid mth email figure of 13.90%.

My 2DP half hrly figures 1st to 15th 4-6.30pm inclusive figure is 4.62 kwh (A)

My cumulative daily 3DP figure from meter readings is 33.039 kwh (B) and using the daily 2DP figure is 33.05 kwh (C)

A ÷ B = 13.983%

A ÷ C = 13.978%

So i would have expected to see my mid mth email target figure to be 13.98% 

Yes i realise its in my favour, but what am i doing wrong? 

I have a bit of OCD when it comes to things with figures, i find even 1p if my home accounts dont balance, i would never dream of writing in a balancing entry.🤣

Incidentally i am currently back under the target. Also my Sep figures matched for mid and end of mth, but Oct was further out than above yet the end of mth matched. It frustrated me then. Sep though had very little variance day to day in usage, whereas Oct started to towards end of the month.

You could try looking at the 3 dp half hourly figures from one of the 3rd party sources if you are only using 2 dp half hourly figures from ovo.

Join the club   🤗

That’s most probably where the error creeps in. If you’re seeing 3DP figures anywhere - in the meter readings, as you say - then the meter is most probably sending 3DP half-hourly usage figures. I’ll tack on at the bottom how you can find these without resorting to third-party data, although they should all be identical. I use n3rgy’s figures, helpfully provided as CSV by Guy Lipman’s excellent utility.

Brilliant!

Find OVO’s half-hourly data for your account to three places of decimals
  

This assumes you’re using Windows and Excel. The process will be similar for other software combinations. 

1. Open a new browser session in Microsoft Edge (Chrome should work, too, but I don’t know about other browsers).
2. Visit account.ovoenergy.com and sign in to cache an access token*.
3. Open a new tab in the same session and copy this URL into the address bar:
   https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/usage/api/half-hourly/1234567?date=2023-11-21
4. Substitute your own OVO account number for 1234567 and change the date to suit, then press Enter to open the page.

You should see a page of JSON with one set of data for each of the 48 half-hourly periods. You can copy the entire page and paste it as plain text into a fresh Excel worksheet, where it’s easy to extract the figures you need.

I massage it a bit by using Find & replace to get rid of some of the awkward bits: find space and replace with nothing, then find comma and replace with nothing. 

Select all the data and apply Filter, selecting only the rows starting with “consumption”

Then use Data > Text to columns > Delimited and select Other | colon (:).

You should end up with a column of 3DP figures for the 48 half-hours starting at midnight, ready to copy and paste into your working sheet.  
 

*  This token only lasts half an hour. If it expires while you’re working, you’ll see an error. Return to the account page and sign in again to clear it.
  

Get half-hourly data as CSV from n3rgy
  

Visit Smart Meter Reports (guylipman.com) and follow the prompts to create an n3rgy.com account. The steps to get CSV consumption data from Guy’s pages are pretty clear, but come back and ask for directions if you get lost.

The data are also available direct from the n3rgy site, but they’re not quite so simple to unravel.

To be clear n3rgy is a 3rd party @Firedog 

@Firedog 

@Jeffus 

Thank you for the instructions, which i will follow as funnily enough i just know the basics, well maybe a teeny bit more, but wouldnt  manage without them. I will have a play around this evening/tomorrow, so watch this space.😊