Power Move February 2024- Struggling to hit the target

Don’t be so quick to judge. £1 a day has always been my average even before I joined the fire service. As it so happens, I use about the same regardless of whether I’m in all day or out all day.

Also, communal heating systems are more common than you think. I am in the same boat as MANY folk who are in supported living and/or independent living schemes - and there’s tens of thousands of people in the UK who are in one.

All it basically does is allow me to run other stuff for the same price as what the heating would cost, so I actually don’t save much in that regard because that other stuff runs 24/7/365 - heating does not do that.

As for what I do with the fire service? It only takes but a moment to Google what a fire service community volunteer does. We operate on an assignment basis, so unlike operational crews we don’t spend our days hanging around fire stations. And unlike pretty much all other support staff roles, we’re not confined to a particular place either. We go wherever the service asks us to go - but only when we have an active assignment. We are off-duty the rest of the time and do our own thing. On top of that, our assignments are handed out on the basis of mutual agreement between the volunteer and the service. If I just want to stick to assignments within 2 miles of me, I can do that just fine and no-one will mind. I instead choose to travel all over the entire service area because I love to explore new places and do new things. That is the sole reason I can spend all day out on an assignment - because many of mine are long distance ones and/or are several hours long due to the nature of them.

Ultimately, it generally means my Power Move targets are lower than yours - they’re based on MOVING power, not REDUCING it. I just have to work harder than everyone else in order to get the prize.

You cannot win unless you play the game properly and by the rules. If memory serves Suze, you seem to fall into the category of forum users who keep moaning because you’re not playing the game properly. You need to get over it - or at very least, try harder at actually playing to win.

If you keep on your warpath that you seem to be going down, we’ll just keep explaining this important fact again and again.

If you are not interested in playing the game properly however, may I please ask that you consider stepping aside and consider possibly withdrawing from further contributions in the Power Move group. Forum Volunteers and other contributors monitor it primarily to assist those in need of help. The extra noise created by random moaning makes it harder for us to keep up.

Sometimes it is hard if you need to cook your meat say like chicken. you don’t want to be cooking after seven you be eating much later. as l worked longer today as l was needed. sometimes l achieve the hour ones which seem easier.

It clearly states ‘Use 14.5% or less of your home’s total daily electricity between 4pm and 7pm, Monday to Friday.’ I too wonder how OVO calculate their figures. I am away a lot which means during the week I am only using background electricity evenly spread out over weekday 24 hr periods which equates to 12.5% during any 3 hour period including that between 4pm and 7pm. Despite this I got an email from OVO stating that my average consumption for March’s weekday 4 to 7pm periods to date was 22.97% which doesn’t make sense.   

It’s from the Half-Hourly usage data your Smart Meter records. If your usage is just significantly background, I’m afraid you’ll struggle to hit the targets - it’s about moving power usage (electricity only!) around rather than shutting everything down.

Don’t give up though!

… only using background electricity evenly spread out over weekday 24 hr periods which equates to 12.5% during any 3 hour period

Not always, or at least not in every case.

Remember that your ‘background’ use may not always be constant throughout the day.
Even background use can be more in some hours than in others.

For example:
Most people have the central heating timer set to off overnight, so for the night time hours it never fires up and the electric pump doesn’t run.
Fridges/freezers, you don’t open them at night meaning they don’t have to run as often to cool down again.
You may have other things that are timed to be always-off overnight.
So there can be less background use during the night hours.

As a very rough example (it’s not entirely correct but illustrates the point) take out 6 hours of background use overnight and the percentage for the 3 target hours changes.
Instead of being 3 hours out of 24 (12.5%) it becomes 3 hours out of 18 and so 16.6%.
In reality of course the calculation is a bit more complicated than that because there is still other background use going on at night.

Edit to add a real life example:
During the night my own current background use in a half hour period is 0.01 kWh, when I’m not in the house during the daytime the background use is higher at 0.03 kWh. The difference is simply the 95W central heating pump running occasionally in daytime.
Neither is very high, but daytime currently has 3x the background use of nightime.
That will change as the summer comes and the heating stops firing up during the day.

The way to check your own percentages is to keep an eye on your own half-hour usage figures, they are available on your OVO account portal, and calcaulate the percentages for yourself.
That’s a lot of half-hour periods to calculate over a month and many of us copy/paste them into a spreadsheet to keep a running track of it. (Some have posted their own particular spreadsheets on the forum for others to use).

Once you do start looking more closely at your own half-hour usage figures it can give you other useful insights into how you use electricity throughout the day, useful not just for the Power Move promotion.

I have done this (checked my half hourly useage and put it onto a spreadsheet) and the half hour readings are fairly consistent over the 24 hour period so I cannot see how the 3 hours between 4pm and 7pm suddenly account for nearly 23% of the 24 hour useage. Blastoise186 it clearly states ‘Use 14.5% or less of your home’s total daily electricity between 4pm and 7pm, Monday to Friday’ for a reward, nothing about moving it about so I don’t understand where your explanation comes from. I presume that the half hourly kWh values presented in the useage data is the total amount of units consumed over the previous half hour up to that point in each of the data points.

The way to win isn’t by just using less during the specified periods, but to also move that same usage to other parts of the day. That’s why it’s called OVO Power Move rather than OVO Power Reduce or OVO Power Shutdown. The clue is in the name! :)

I repeat the criteria doesn’t mention anything about moving energy, just about a % of the total daily (24hr) useage between 4 and 7pm on weekdays.

It might not say it there, but it’s been said a lot on the Forum.

Hi @STUAND20, it’s an interesting query you've raised…the apparent discrepancy  between your own peak hours analysis and OVO’s analysis of same. 
 

You ask whether “the half hourly kWh values presented in the useage data is the total amount of units consumed over the previous half hour up to that point in each of the data points”, and yes you’ve got it right: so for March (peak hours will change for the next Power Move incentive) the relevant 6 peak-hour time slots are 1600-1830, out of the 48 weekday slots 0000-2330.
 

If you have the time (if you haven’t done so already) get your spreadsheet to calculate for all 20 weekdays in March (this Friday 29th being a BH doesn’t count), or at least the 18 we’ll have had by midnight tonight: that’s important, because the incentive is calculated as a percentage over the entire month (of candidate weekdays).  One or two wobbly days can have an impact.

Once that’s done, I’d be really surprised if there was much of a discrepancy between your own figures and OVO’s over, say, half a percentage point, if that.
 

The other thing that might have a bearing is that OVO’s Power Move incentives require a minimum number of weekdays throughout the month in which HH readings have been faithfully reported by your meter.  Any days of “missing” data could appear at first glance to be “normal” smart meter days when you look through your usage, but may in fact be estimates.  Check carefully each of the days in your OVO usage account, by clicking on each weekday to make sure that each day opens up to show each and every 48 HH figure.

Let us know how you get on…any (really noticeable) difference between your calculations  and OVO’s would indeed be puzzling, you’re right.