We're opening up Power Move to all eligible OVO customers

tl;dr

It isn’t clear from the documentation for this exercise whether a Peak Move challenge involves reducing peak usage by a percentage or to a percentage, or indeed at all, so long as it’s below a given threshold. Whichever of these is the case, it’s not clear how any required reduction is measured.

The documentation refers to non-essential use. If it’s not essential, we should be encouraged not to use it at all, not just move it to a greener time. 
  

I’ve been looking again at the PM documentation, and the more I read, the more confused I get.

This is pretty unambiguous (from OVO Energy | Power Move Terms and Conditions):

• Power Move is a series of quarterly challenges that reward you for shifting your electricity use to greener times.

So is this (from OVO Energy | Power Move FAQs):

• For Peak Move challenges, this target will be a percentage by which you need to reduce your peak time ... electricity use. 

So, if the target is 12.5%, I’m supposed to reduce my peak time use by 12.5%, right?
In 2023Q2, I used an average of 3283Wh each day. During peak time, I used 303Wh on average. So to complete this challenge, I have to reduce this consumption to 265Wh by shifting 38Wh to some other time. Big deal!

In the FAQ, this is how OVO determine whether the challenge has been met:

• Peak Move … Your peak electricity usage must be 12.5% or less of your daily use …

That’s not the same thing at all. I could increase my peak usage by 40% and still stay below 12.5% of daily usage. I can’t see any details of how the primary requirement -  ‘shifting your electricity use to greener times.’ is measured. There would have to be some base line from historical data to measure against, but there’s no mention of this in the documentation. 

Then we have:

• Peak Move - we’ll ask you to shift your non-essential electricity use out of peak times

Aha! So it’s only non-essential electricity that has to be consumed at some other time. How do we - or OVO - determine what is essential and what isn’t? Surely if it’s not essential, we shouldn’t be using it at all. We all try not to waste electricity, so what we do use must be classed as essential, right? I guess that what this is intended to mean is that electricity which has to be used sometime (i.e. is essential) is consumed outside of the peak-time window. That’s not quite the same thing; it looks like it’s the time of use that’s not critical for this category of consumption, for example running the washing machine. The machine has to be run (i.e. its use is essential), but not necessarily between 4pm and 7pm.

Again, looking at my consumption for the past few weeks, I see that the average power draw during the quiet hours (midnight - 7am) is 64W. This represents the consumption of things like my fridge and freezer, IHD, fire and other alarms, security lighting, three clocks, my indoor climate monitor, my Internet modem/router (without which some of the others wouldn’t function) and four timers that ensure that non-essential stuff is switched off at night. This gives a reasonable base line of essential consumption.

The power draw in peak time averages 92W. This tells me that I’m drawing 28W that could perhaps be not drawn for the purposes of this exercise. It’s difficult to pin this down, but it will include the on-all-day wireless and computer, plus the odd cup of coffee and perhaps heating something up for supper. Foregoing all this would reduce my peak-time consumption by 83Wh, well above the 38Wh I would need to shift to meet the challenge.

More clarity needed!

@Firedog having now completed the July phase, I can confirm that it is simply the percentage use, during that peak time, needing to be below 12.5% of your total use.  Like you, we already have a low overall usage figure so we set about ensuring that we use less between 4pm and 7pm

Thanks, BP. So this sentence in the FAQ for this scheme is just 180º wrong: “For Peak Move challenges, this target will be a percentage by which you need to reduce your peak time ... electricity use.”

Will @Abby_OVO or somebody please consider having the text corrected? E.g. to something like ‘For Peak Move challenges, this target will be a percentage of daily usage that peak time ... electricity use for the month should not exceed.’ 

It’s a bit surprising that there’s apparently no need to demonstrate that usage during peak time has in fact been reduced.

Hi @decroisic I’m happy to confirm that Power Move is now eligible to 100% of eligible  smart meter customers. You should see it available on your online account as of today.  

@Firedog there’s a summary of the Power Move methodology here:

• Power Move Frequently Asked Questions F.A.Q.

I will flag your feedback around the Power Move content to the team in case any changes need to be considered. 

Thanks for the update Tim  - I’ve signed up.  As its 14th August, when am I being measured from in terms of the 12.5% target - from today or from 1st August?? 

Thanks for the update Tim. It may only be a tenner a month but it is still one third of our electricity bill for a month so is well worth having.

We are only low energy users but it is dead easy to get under the 12.5% and the mathematics of how to calculate it are easily understood even for an old git like me.

It's not just about the money though is it, if 20 million households just changed a few of their habits just think what could get achieved?

Thanks again for your efforts.

Len

Hi @Len Holbeche  I’d love to know as a fellow low user what you did, how you changed things to make it ‘dead easy’.  I struggled in the trial at first. although just made it. Then I started moving weekend use to weekday use outside of 4 - 7pm. Is that what you did?  Or do you have other tips and strategies that I can benefit from :) 

We live in a four bedroom house with gas heating and cooking.

At this time of the year we use about 2kwh of lecky per day.

We cook with gas and use an electric oven twice per week for baking bread.

We have no deep freeze only a fridge with a freeze box in the top and apart from this and the Internet thingy there is absolutely nothing on standby.

Washing machine 30degree 15min washes during the day. Three or four times per week.

We have an electric kettle for making tea and coffee but this is never used between 4 and 7pm.

During these times the only electricity we use is the digital radio and perhaps a light in the room we are sitting in.

It's simple really just turn stuff off and don't believe all the hype you read about deep freezes, micro waves, air fryers etc not using much electricity.

If there is a light showing and it is making a buzzing noise you are using electricity, either that or there is a wasp nest in your loft.

Just ask yourself a simple question. If you had to feed a meter with two bob coins would you have all this stuff chugging away in the background?

In truth we haven't had to change much we don't use a kettle between 4 and 7 and we don't watch the telly which is absolute rubbish anyway. We dont watch the news thereby not only saving electricity but our mental wellbeing as well.

Hope that helps?

Thanks for such a full break down of your method = and I love your descriptions :)

I have undercounter fridge & g=freezer, internet thingy but other than that I never have excess stuff on standby - I even unplug the door bell!  During the trial I used TV only or laptop on battery during the 4 - 7 curfew.  I found the only way to  achieve my target was to move things like washing, lawn mowing, power tool diy type stuff out of the weekend and in to M-F outside of 4- 7. (which as byproduct made my weekend nicer for me)  I’m a 40 degree washer so will try your 30 degree and see how I get on with that - thank you.  

Worth noting that the router for your internet needs to remain on 24/7. Bad things will happen if you keep power cycling it all the time. :)

They don’t take much juice though - I’ve got some of the most overpowered network kit in the UK and even that barely takes anything.

I wonder why you say this? The usual reason that’s given is that modem/router software and firmware updates are delivered in the quiet hours, so they will only be received if the unit is powered on. I don’t know what happens to updates like this if the unit is never on during the night, but I would expect them to be delivered on the next power-up.

It’s a common remedy for lost connections to switch the unit off, wait a bit and then switch it on again. There have been periods when I’ve had to do this several times a day; nowadays it’s only once or twice a week. What bad things should I be expecting to see?

I suppose it depends on what sort of modem/router we’re talking about, but I’d be interested in your reasons for leaving it on when it’s not in use.

The main reason is that it confuses the exchange into thinking the line is faulty and/or unstable, which triggers a ton of diagnostics and recovery actions… That slow the line right down for up to a month.

Doing it once in a while isn’t an issue, but doing it every day is.

On top of that, constantly forcing it on and off at the wall doesn’t do much good for the electronics inside either...

It’s more that the adaptive technique used to get to the higher speeds gets reset. On modern systems, the system ‘hops’ between frequencies and pushes the speed to get towards the best speed that it can for your particular set up. 
 

As we are just over half way through the second month (August) now, I wondered if anyone has seen a monthly update yet?

Last month the message was that there would be no update as for users who had not joined before the month began (difficult when I don’t think it was launched until 1st) but surely now users should see a progress report?

If it’s actually not going to happen, than why not just say so?

Hi @decroisic, usage will be measured from the day the customer signs up to the challenge, so you’ll will be measured and eligible from 14th August and if successful will receive pro-rata credit.

@BPLightlog the update emails are due to be sent out in the next few days, to those who were able to and did sign up before 1st August.

Thanks Tim for the info - that's great news.

@Firedog I’m happy to say we’ve reviewed and updated these terms based on your feedback. Thanks again for taking the time to feed this back to us. 

Hi

Its 23 August and Path to Zero does not appear in my menu options nor does Boiler Cover. Why not ? I am eligible and took part in the first Power Move trial.

Hey @Al60_h87 

Sorry to hear this, is this on the app, or online?

Hi

This is online, I haven't used the app.

Hey @Al60_h87 

I’ve reached out to the Power Move team to see if they can shed some light on this, and hopefully get those back on your account. I’ll pop back on this thread when I hear back from them.

As ridiculous as it is, when using Firefox I have no “Path to Zero”, but when logging in in Chrome I do. Moreover, there are quite a few more options in Chrome. It seems like Firefox users are treated like second-class citizens.

Firefox	Chrome

This is NOT the fault of OVO, but Firefox.

It’s to do with the extreme anti-tracking measures that Firefox implements on default settings. OVO cannot prevent that. You need to change your browser settings to tone it down a bit.

I verified using Browserstack that doing so resolves the issue.

No, this has to be a business decision, because there is no single technical reason not do display the offers (if there were, you surely can point to an issue in the Mozilla issue tracker?). The only difference is that OVO cannot gather extra marketing data.

There’s no specific Bug in the Firefox Bugzilla and tbh I haven’t got time to mine through such a beast of a bug tracker. But this is a business decision, sure. One made by Mozilla a while ago.

It’s ultimately up to you. Get the full experience in Firefox and accept that OVO can get a bit of extra data (it’s not like we’re talking Facebook/Cambridge Analytica levels here!), or restrict that data and break the site. You were warned when you turned that stuff on that it can break sites and to use it at your own risk.

It’d be a bit like you making a Beef Wellington for a whole restaurant and I randomly shove Dorset Naga chilli into some of the plates. The chili isn’t meant to be there and ruins the experience for the guests that have the tampered food while everyone else gets the experience you intended. In effect, that’s what the extreme tracking protection in Firefox does - it puts Dorset Naga chili into the experience of some websites and burns the intentions of the site owner to pieces.