Power Move - spring challenge

I live alone and spent the winter with only one light and the TV on during the ‘critical’ hours.

I never wash/dry in the evenings, appliances are switched off at the wall (except for fridge/freezer), the oven is rarely switched on, if I spend any time away from home the gas is switched to holiday mode...yet I still did not hit the target.

I felt like someone living in poverty. 

Your telly might be like mine and uses loads of power.  Mine’s old compact fluorescent lit.  When I got my free Tapo plugs I found out it uses 130 watts and really messed with the figures for hitting targets.

In February I looked at how my progress was going and could see I’d get nothing.  I did a load more washing outside the peak time and the extra expense more than paid for itself because I got back more than what the washing cost with the £15.

Better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

Hi @Yebrok, Good point that @Tron Burgundy makes about the telly…and of course in general if your consumption is consistently low and flat across all of the 24 hour weekday period, that’s no good for Power Move. It doesn’t reward low consumption, only low consumption in the critical 3 hour period. For example, if you’re (commendably) a low user anyway throughout the day (or, as you say, if you’re away from home anyway), Power Move will be unlikely to reward you.  The trick is to be seen to have clearly shifted consumption away from the critical period to the non-critical weekday period. 

You have to make your key three-hour weekday period “look good” compared to the rest of the 21 hours in the weekday. It’s all averaged out over the month, so one or two wobbly weekdays don’t necessarily matter as long as they’re compensated for at some point during the month…there are 21 weekdays in April (bank holidays and weekends don’t count) to have a good go at! So more than sitting in semi-darkness with just the telly and a single light which all helps of course, it’s just as important to run some tasks in the weekday (outside the critical period, of course!) that maybe you would have saved to the weekend. Or just grab the bull by the horns and run some extra hoovering or washing or oven jobs (in the weekday) just to make that critical period look nice and low by comparison: after all, if you get things right, those extra tasks will all have run on “free” electricity, paid for by Power Move. 
 

It is supposed to be getting into Spring now, hopefully, but don’t attempt to sit and move around in semi darkness and without heating, it honestly doesn’t save that much and probably won’t impact on Power Move, and is definitely not recommended for one’s comfort or peace of mind!

Loads of folk on here have been keen to come up with ideas, if you’ve got any particular sticking points or specific queries, do come back to us…for example are you checking your half hourly weekday usage stats every day or two in your OVO account pages? That’s one of the most important things, because just checking your in-home display (IHD) every now and again is not enough to spot usage trends.

And…don’t make yourself miserable over this, not worth it! But, if we can get a few pounds extra in the month, for helping Grid usage as well as ourselves, so much the better!
 

EDIT…Oh yes, and of course you’ll remember that the critical weekday evening peak hours period from April onwards is 6 - 9, (not the winter 4 o’clock to 7 o’clock period)…all the best…

Dont forget that as well as the change of the 3 target hours from 4-7 to 6-9 the maximum that you can be rewarded has also reduced from £15 to £10.

These changes will make some decide that it is no longer worth the effort which is understandable.

By the same token the 6-9 target hours may be more achieveable for some.

But if you can't meet the PM targets then so what?

Think of it as a game - one that you don't have to take part in.

The new targets start tomorrow, so if you are taking part in the new game then on your marks, get set, ….

I am pretty sure it doesn’t do this.  I have emailed a feature request to OVO to add a feature to the app to allow you to set times when you don’t want car to charge.  The way charge anytime works for me (using the Renault app as opposed to a charger app) means that the control over charging is confined to the Charge Anytime app so to stop car charging at peak time I need to ensure car is unplugged.  As I have previously posted, since December I have only not got charge once when putting in a schedule with a short timeframe say 1 hour 30 mins.  if I set a time window on the car it stops it charging as soon as I plug it in (if the time I set is not now obvs) but charge anytime over rides that timer and charges when it wants to, then sets a new timer if my target % < 100% I guess to prevent the car starting charging again.
 

A quick question for all those keenly tracking their usage by the half-hour: have you had the data for 31 March?

I haven’t, but that doesn’t mean to say they won’t arrive at some stage. Clock-change day is always awkward, because our meters and the entire energy industry stick to GMT all year round, so there’s a brief hiccup at the start and end of BST. The data table for these days has always been a bit of a mess, so perhaps they’re still trying to make it look right.

On a more positive note focussing on charging my PHEV on non peak hours Mon to Fri has got me rebates in January and February without doing any other time shifting.  The move from 4-7 to 6-9 will help us as any oven cooking of our tea will be off peak (we are retired so tend to eat at 5)

Biggest pain is getting car to charge at right time on Sunday night/ Monday morning and avoiding peak time - Hence feature request. It’s easy to use Friday up to midnight as my weekly 100% charge.  I guess I need to watch out for the BST issue to ensure I get the right time period.

as you can see I have two half hours which I guess will actually be from today if my reading of the BST/universal time issue is correct

That’s obviously unusual, and it’s anybody’s guess which day (or indeed which hour) those two half-hours belong to. We’ll give them a couple more days …