Why does Power Move not include weekends?

I have solar panels so any power move at this time of year is impossible 

In Power Move calculations, weekend usage is completely ignored. Your percentage  usage is calculated on 30 minute readings between 4 and 7 pm Mon-Fri. The purpose is to shuffle usage to off peak periods during the week, not shift everything to weekends creating further peak periods.

It ain't rocket science ! Folks come home from work or school during peak weekday periods and everything gets turned on. Cookers, televisions, dishwashers etc. 

For the purpose of this scheme, monthly isn't actually monthly, only the weekdays during any particular calendar month - maybe twenty or twenty one days.

As a demand management tool, Power Move is far from perfect.

Unlike Power Move Plus, it does not give each user an individual usage target. Instead, it takes broad-brush approach to demand management by (a) targeting %age of daily usage and (b) making only non-bank holiday weekdays eligible.

This gives rise to a lot of complaints, misunderstandings and some perverse incentives.

Complaints: If you don’t like Power Move just leave. It is optional.

Misunderstandings: Surely by now these have all been covered many times on the forum. Please read previous posts before raising a repeat query. Also @Tim_OVO , please can you update the FAQ with answers to all these questions that, well, are frequently asked.

Perverse incentives: I, and others, have pointed out that you can boost your chances of getting a Power Move rebate by shifting heavy usage tasks from the weekend to weekdays. It doesn’t do anything to reduce peak demand but it does work to our benefit so I guess Ovo just have to put up with users doing every they can to get the rebate each month.

Hey @Simon 1402, yes we can certainly update the FAQ.

All, if there’s a list of questions you all want answering I can collate them and forward them on to the Power Move team to answer.

The first being why aren’t weekends included in the target. 

If there are any more questions you’d like me to put to the team that haven’t already been answered in an official capacity please comment below 🙂 

I’ve spoken to the team who have advised, with including the weekend usage it would be quite complicated in practice without changing the whole proposition structure. However, we are always assessing the impact of Power Move & looking at new ways to iterate in order to maximise the positive environmental impact & the customer experience. It’s on the road map to look into adding weekends to the modelling, and is something that’s being looked into. 

Why would anyone want to add weekends to the equation anyway - it’s two days you get off and don’t have to think about whether you can have a couple of cups of tea and don’t have to say to your girlfriend “No, we can’t play Mario 3D World Co-Op on the big telly til seven!”

We’ll just have to see what happens won’t we. l try my best not always the case. it’s quite difficult at times. like the cuppa so why should you go without. but anything else if l have dinner to do that is a bit later. we use to that now.

That was my reply 5 months ago when weekend inclusion was proposed. Now we have it for the summer! But where are my sums wrong? The original target was 12.5% for the minimum discount. With weekends included in non-peak, the equivalent is 11.2%. I have a feeling there’s more to it than that because the target we have now is 8.5% - significantly lower - and all you get for that is less than the price of a cup of tea!

We are low users and, let’s face it, who wants to stay in and use energy all weekend during the summer? Better to go out and buy that cup of tea surely? So we’re not trying during the current challenge. We’re on about 10% so far.

Hey @Mike90216,

We have a thread which i’ll link below that’s got a lot of discussions since weekends are now included! I hope this helps 😊

Thanks for tagging me. Yeah, my calculator obviously malfunctioned :-) Should be 8.9% not 11.2% so not so far out after all. I’ll join the other thread.