We’re publishing a guest post by Guy de la Bédoyère, historian and long-standing contributor to the Daily Sceptic about the exorbitant cost of installing a heat pump. He reckons that if you factor in set-up costs and running costs, it would cost him around £40,000 over the next 10 years.
Listening to someone who has just had a heat pump installed and is banging on like a religious zealot – as I have done – is like coming across a man dancing for joy because he has just had his wallet stolen and lost his life savings.
Several years ago we started investing in a solar panel system. It was a no-brainer. We had the money earning nothing in the bank and we are fortunate enough to live in a suitable house with a large outbuilding on which the (nominal) 4KW system was fitted. It cost about £5,000, having dramatically come down in price as soon as government grants were ended. Fancy that?
We noticed the reduction in electricity bills immediately and to that we could add the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) which is, sadly, no longer available to new installers. Under its terms, you get paid for the power you generate, whether or not you’ve used it yourself. In 2020 we added two batteries because, after all, a solar power system without batteries is like filling the bath without the plug in. That cost about another £3,000 (including the additional inverter and wiring), but we have since added a third (£900) and will have a fourth fitted next month. That represents a practical limit to our setup.
The bottom line is that the system is paying for itself. The annual return on the capital is about 16% so most of the outlay has been recovered. The electricity is free and – crucially – harvesting it is free too. The system runs the house for nothing most of the day, as well as diverting spare power via a special device to heating our water and charging the batteries. We can now run all evening and most of the night for free as well. Even better, the higher electricity prices rise, the more we’re saving.
Heat pumps are, as it turns out, an entirely different story, but the way some politicians and journalists bang on, you could be forgiven for thinking they’re going to save the planet and your bank balance by using all that free energy from Mother Nature. No, they won’t and I’m not even going to discuss how well they heat a house.
I’ve just had a quote for a heat pump, in this case an ‘air source’ version. It would cost us £11,000 for the pump, topped up by a government grant of £5,000 to cover the full price of £16,000. That does not take into account potential extra costs for enhanced insulation to make up for the relatively low heating capability of the system, and possibly having to replace the radiators.
And then there’s the cost of running it, something most people do not realise. The estimated power consumption of our putative heat pump was to be just over 10,500 KWh per annum. That’s just under 29 KWh per day, or about £7–£8 at present prices (factoring in that daily use in winter would be far higher). You can work that out from your electricity bill, but in my case that represents a 400–500% increase in my bill by £3,000 per annum on top of what I already pay.
Although the heat the pump extracts from the atmosphere is ‘free’, the pump requires a huge amount of additional power from the grid to run the system, unlike a solar panel setup, and there’s no feed-in tariff of any sort – obviously, because it isn’t generating any new power. The system was to be guaranteed for 10 years which therefore means at current prices you are looking at around £40,000 over that period (running costs + initial outlay).
I might add that our solar panels are on a roof and don’t get in anyone’s way. One of the inverters is in the outbuilding and the one for the batteries is in the utility room. An air source heat pump, by contrast, is a large appliance that looks like an air conditioning unit suitable for a small block of flats being parked outside your house and connected with large pipes. A ground source pump means ripping up quite a lot of your garden (if you have one).
Now, it’s pretty obvious that the oil we are using for our existing boiler has gone up hugely in price and it may get worse. But I can’t see any basis for dumping an existing system that works perfectly well for one that costs just as much (or more to run) and might cost me as much as £15,000 to install.
And let’s not forget: manufacturing all these new heat pumps comes with its own massive carbon footprint. But apparently, heat pump fanatics are perfectly happy to overlook that, as well as the gigantic Ioad that heat pumps will impose on the grid and all the installations and infrastructure necessary to cover that as well as to charge all the electric cars we’re being encouraged to buy. To put it into perspective, I’d have to have four times as many solar panels and batteries as I already have just to run the heat pump if I was to cover its needs myself.
As so often with government initiatives and especially Net Zero, one just has to wonder: how stupid do they think we are? I’m all for saving energy, but I’m not going to change my heating system for one that replaces being ripped off for oil by being ripped off for electricity and paying out well over 10 grand for the privilege.
The difference in the maths between the solar panels and the heat pump is enormous. One makes sense because it pays for itself, cuts bills, and ends up returning a profit, but still depends on having the room and the funds. The other under present circumstances is lunacy – unless, and only if, you are having to replace the heating system anyway. But it will still cost far more than a conventional replacement.
This may be settled in the future. Heat pumps are at an early stage of development. The most likely prospect is that they will become far cheaper and far more efficient. The worst thing that could happen now is millions of people being coerced and rushed into installing, or convincing themselves to install, existing inefficient and costly systems and then being obliged to scrap them in favour of newer, ‘greener’ heat pumps in a few years.
Or could that be the plan all along – to empty out people’s savings on the latest moral crusade? The moment one understands the Net Zero cult to be just as much about making money and futile gestures as anything else it all finally makes sense.
If we rush into this, it’s almost inevitable we’ll make things worse and then we, like most past generations, will be cursed by our descendants.
I sent some of this to Roger Harrabin, the soon-to-retire BBC’s Energy and Environment Analyst, whom I used to know when I worked there. He told me he’d “filed it”. Hmmm. I bet he did.
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I’m not sure that heat pumps can actually get much more efficient. There are practical limits to how much heat you can extract from the air so unless there is a major re-working of the laws of physics any time soon there will be no significant improvement.
The laws of physics have been replaced by Net Zero and The Science™️.
Anything is possible now at whim – we even have perpetual motion, you can get as much energy out of ‘sustainable’ without putting any in, and ‘sustainable’ requires no cost input, it just give a return on investment.
This is going to be the case with fusion reactors – just round the corner. These generators will cost zero to build, zero to operate, require zero energy input but will give eternal, unlimited energy ‘free’.
Welcome to Wonderland.
Like Jonathan Swift’s scientists extracting sunlight from cucumbers!
Fusion and fast breeder reactors were ‘the future’ in 1975. Neither has been successfully developed and we hear almost nothing of FBRs nowadays.
The FBRs being planned 45 years ago would have used liquid sodium as a coolant. Inconveniently, sodium that leaks out of pipes tends to catch fire.
One company at least is promising the first grid connected fusion reactor by 2030. They recently achieved 1m degrees centigrade, critical for success. They have hit every milestone they have planned so far.
And they are British.
https://www.tokamakenergy.co.uk
If it does work they will be sold off to the yanks or Chinese for pennies.
There is another problem.
Any form of nuclear reactor requires regulators who have public trust. That’s true of other forms of energy production too, of course – but there are particular sensitivities where nuclear power is concerned.
Who trust regulators anymore?
Alter Ego,
Speaking of disposal of waste – nuclear or windmill sails – an Irish story is of note.
Over in County Galway the Irish electricity supply company ESB, built a windmill farm on top of a local small mountain called Slieve Auchty.
Unfortunately a bog sat on top of the hill, and constructing the windmills and their infrastructure caused the bog to shift inundating the countryside below with an estimated 2 million tons of peat.
Consequently the EU imposed a daily fine on ESB for the damage.
To date the Irish taxpayers (ESB is State owned) have paid Brussels an estimated 20 million euros.
Last week ESB said they were to decommission the windmills.
There is no where in Ireland to bury the non recyclable synthetic windmill sails.
All in all this fiasco will cost taxpayers untold millions for zero electricity, a ruined beauty spot and millions of tons of misplaced peat bog, which incidentally the EU deny locals the centuries old custom of harvesting burnable peat from.
A salutary lesson in pig headed do gooding religious cultism.
These incompetent and arrogant fools, all over the world, have access to advice from thoughtful and well-informed people; but persistently choose to follow instead the urgings of whatever lobbyists sound most agreeable or generous to them.
They have the nerve to give us orders and berate us for our failure to obey them – even when, as in mask-wearing, their orders are known to be ridiculous; and, in the case of vaccine mandates, capable of inflicting immense harm.
I’ve always thought small scale thorium reactors were the way to go — but then, that technology doesn’t create weapons-grade uranium.
No not that corner, the next one, or maybe the one after that, or maybe the one after ………..
I remember ZETA (zero energy thermonuclear reactor) in 1957. It was to give us free energy, except it was a bit like heat pumps requiring massive inputs of energy for not much out. It was not net zero, it was net negative.
The intervening years have not greatly improved the situation
Cold fusion is ten years away, and has been for the last thirty years or more.
8 years away now. See my other post.
Its like the doomsday clock.
Midnight never comes.
Just like global warming :-D!
They work down to about -16C, so hope it never gets colder than t hat.
‘Working’ down to -16C is a matter of perspective. I understand Air Source Heat pumps fall away badly around -5C for building heating purposes.
Which really isn’t the point. They were never considered suitable for anything until super insulated building began to be built, in Scandinavia for example, which also happen to have good Hydro power provision.
It’s all about technically illiterate politicians being seduced by idealistic green lobbyists who are equally technically illiterate.
Red-hot,
Being an ex pat as you are, it may interest you to know that our glorious little leader is spending untold millions installing external coatings on council houses here in Angus and Tayside (and presumably in the rest of Scotland)
I believe this to be in preparation for wasting further untold millions to install
Heat Pumps in future.
Is that extra coatings as in cladding? I haven’t seen any signs of that in East Dunbartonshire so perhaps you’re being used as guinea pigs?
Version,
From observation, they strip the pebble dash/harling off, put some sort of cladding on and then re plaster and pebble dash the walls.
I don’t suppose it’s the infamous London type.
Much like the ‘efficiency’ of wind turbines, assuming one only concentrates on aerodynamic efficiency.
The big gains were made early in their development. They are roughly 90% as efficient as they possibly can be, which means any future gains will be increments of fractions of a percentage. They can never achieve 100% efficiency.
Come on Greenacres,
Don’t be silly, bringing logic and physics into it!
Heat pumps are reverse fridges. Efficiency has been capped out for decades, any gains now will be marginal. There’s no magical way to extract heat from cold air.
They don’t like the term “efficient”, by the look of it. Instead, they have invented the term “coefficient of performance (COP)”. I’m not advertising this (https://greenenergysolution.org/en/heat-pumps-en/working-principle/ ), but there’s some interesting background there.
The type of working fluid has changed over time – historically, it’s been quite a nasty compound to chuck out into the air, with it’s effect on the ozone layer. The choice of it also seems to have an effect on the COP of any heat transfer system.
Regarding solar – if there is a “getting paid for the surplus you supply to the grid” clause, there is always a clause saying that the system must cut off immediately if the grid supply fails. They absolutely do NOT want people supplying domestically-generated electrical energy to each other in a street or local area.
In addition, there are issues concerning the long-term health risks of solar panels – some of the research is quite alarming.
Tell me more.
Try The Non-Tinfoil Guide to EMFs: How to Fix Our Stupid Use of Technologyby Nicolas Pineault or The Invisible Rainbow by Arthur Firstenberg (the latter should be required reading).
Many thanks.
They don’t want it at all! It’s a cost and provides no noticeable capacity to the grid.
Mainly as it just adds instability to the grid, and of course the more of solar setups that are added the more expensive electricity from real generators will become.
That’s for two reasons:
On item 1. it is called a phase locked loop, which is trivial at 50 Hz.
On Item 2. Electricity goes in the direction dictated by the voltage, which is AC.
Star, you are correct that the system must auto disconnect from the grid but not for the reason you stated. It is safety precaution in that if it remains connected it will backfeed into your local network potentially placing electricity workers at risk. It can possibly backfeed thro network transformers which will then act as inverters.
Should anybody have one of these systems installed they are duty bound to inform there supplier to enable their records to be updated so that they can check it is not backfeeding before allowing work to commence on the network where a fault may be present.
Hope this explains adequately.
It’s true that all systems connected to the distribution network have to shut down if the grid supply fails. It’s done to protect the workers, in the main, as without it they could not assume the service cable into one’s house would be dead when the external feed is off (during daylight). My place does supply domestically generated energy to next door (we are both on the same service cable from the distribution cable), and sometimes a bit further out, and as we have had a few power cuts due to cable failures recently, I’m familiar with it!
Not actually true anymore, there are now hybrid inverters that function as a grid tie inverter while the grid is available but disconnect the grid and switch to normal inverter mode when the grid fails, allowing for house loads and battery charging.
aint technology wonderful! now…if only they were more affordable!
If the last two years have shown our lords and masters anything, it is that the population of this country is predominantly stupid, which is why they can push the nonsense of Net Zero down their throats. And it will only get worse – this is just the start.
Its incredible how many people out there still buy into the msm narrative – 20-30 years ago this could be understandable with barely a half-a-dozen or so newspapers available and just a few TV channels feeding the public the information they wanted them to believe was the truth – but I thought that maybe things would change with wider use of the internet and access to other news sources besides the msm and the wealth of information available at the simple click of a mouse – just a little bit of online research can give people a much more balanced view of things on maybe covid or the war in Ukraine or climate change etc. Unfortunately I still hear many many people out there repeating exactly what they hear and read in the msm.
Who wants research when there is strictly come x factor to watch?
”The bottom line is that the system is paying for itself. The annual return on the capital is about 16% so most of the outlay has been recovered. The electricity is free and – crucially – harvesting it is free too. “
I always find the calculations of people who have bought pv solar proving what a smashing deal it is quite remarkable. I wonder why they aren’t millionaires.
Your costs were near £9 000. If we add on opportunity cost, say £10 000. ‘Several’ years ago is imprecise, but if your usual grid electricity costs were say £2 000pa you would cover the cost after 5 years. But solar only works for short periods in our Northern hemisphere and not at all at night. A ‘nominal’ 4kW… I assume you mean 4kVA… supply would be insufficient to meet the power requirements of a modern home, except using only certain appliances alone on some kind of rotation system, without drawing from the grid. Most large appliances on start-up will draw above 4kVA. Do you have no grid costs?
You talk about an RoI of 16%, so that would be £1 600 a year – but if that is a reduction on what you would normally pay for grid supply, that is amortising your capital outlay, not a return on it. The electricity is ‘free’? No it isn’t! It’s paid for by other consumers via the subsidies they are obliged to pay to fund financially unviable boondoggles like your installation and wind and solar generally. So your supposed RoI is funded by impoverishing others.
With respect to heat pumps, you say ‘air source’ – do you mean air-air or air-water. I have experience with the latter in a large 4 bedroom French farm house with underfloor heating. With regards to cost, you need to specify to what other energy source you are comparing it.
i don’t know where you get your figures, but air-water has an efficiency of 1:4 to 5 every unit of energy in gives 4 to 5 out. Therefore if you are comparing it with electricity, for every 4kWh of electricity needed for a conventional system you would only need 1kWh with an a/w heat pump. Compared to piped gas it is about the same cost.
My installation replaced oil-fired heating, oil being very expensive and nuclear electricity in France being very cheap, I amortised my 8 000€ cost (11 500€ minus Government grant) over 4 years, and thereafter was making better than 50% saving on energy cost compared with oil.
There is no need to have extra insulation installed.
Given that most people have piped gas and efficient boilers, a heat pump would not be worth the outlay as there would be no significant energy/cost saving. There are other considerations, they make a noise particularly on a cold night, and cause low frequency vibration.
‘Heat pumps are at an early stage of development.’
Nonsense. They are reverse air conditioning units (look at the picture) or fridges, the technology is simple and has been around for years.
However I agree the whole Net Zero claptrap and change to heat pumps will only impoverish people for no benefit.
Thank you – I couldn’t be bothered to make the same points about solar.
“So your supposed RoI is funded by impoverishing others.”
This was one of the half-dozen reasons why I did not install solar panels – it is disgusting that the relatively rich can do this ONLY at the expense of the poor.
We are continually told how solar/wind costs have fallen and are now ‘cheaper’ than coal or gas. So why are they still subsidised? Unless of course they are only ‘cheaper’ when Paul is robbed to pay Peter.
They are “cheaper” when you factor in the enormous “costs” that not going along with their GangGreen agenda will inflict on us all.
Of course, as these “costs” are overwhelmingly imaginary, the claim of “cheaper” is weapons grade bullshit.
Absolutely correct.
I think that the selfish people who installed solar panels, knowing that they would be subsidised through taxation and energy bills by some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society, should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.
And if they didn’t know, then they should have thought about it before proceeding. It isn’t rocket science.
I remember being at a regional meeting of the Institution of Civil Engineers, where the Institution’s Head of Ethics (can’t remember her actual name or title) enthusiastically reported how much she and her husband were saving on their electricity bills with their new solar installation.
She was nonplussed when I pointed out that as an engineer and supposedly concerned with ethics, this boasting was absolutely inappropriate.
That qualified engineers can go along with this stuff is another demonstration of the pathetic low level state of academia – and every institution of the post-Christian West.
What would Newton have said!
Their bottom line excuse may be that fossil fuels will run out sooner than the voters know, but that is no excuse for a wrong solution, and indeed one which will cause them to run out sooner.
Something withering, but in Latin, would be my guess.
Engineers go along with Heat pumps and other efficient solutions, because they understand what’s going on and can do maths. They can also spot nonsense numbers like those quoted in the article.
Yet to meet an engineer who agrees with any of this nonsense.
The numbers quoted in the article are, however, largely nonsense. I agree with you on that. In reality the numbers are much worse.
People imagine insulating a house is the solution to get these things working, but retro fitting insulation to the existing housing stock will likely add £20,000 for an average home. I know, I have had the quotes. Nor does that include replacing things like kitchens and bathrooms when they have to be ripped out to install the insulation.
Then there is whole house ventilation. Absolutely essential if you stitch a house up snug enough for a heat pump to make sense. Without it the walls will be running with condensation.
Nor do heat pumps work properly without a thermal mass, e.g. concrete floors with pipework from the heat pump running through them. That’s the whole point, to run 24/7 to provide a large, stable heat mass, which can’t be achieved with radiators.
And the results of mis-fitting insulation can be dreadful.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-39602540
I have yet to meet an engineer that agrees with any of the NetZero claptarap, far less any benefit of installing heat pumps.
But Les is not Drax sitting on top of a 600 year supply of coal?
Rent seekers
Yes. That’s exactly it. Thank Mandelson for that particular wheez.
it’s the same for solar farms and wind farms. 25% of our electricity bills are for green energy subsidies.
And Jonnie 2 Jags for people throwing out perfectly good old gas boilers.
Do you mean someone like Call me Dave Cameron’s father in law with his windmills and the Crown Office with their “owning” off shore windmill sites?
Marxist ideas always mean poor people keep less of their earnings to fund rich people connected to the state.
Thank you, JXB. Maths and facts seem to be beyond the purpose of Guy’s article…
Most of this I agree with.
However ‘There is no need to have extra insulation installed.’. If you got your grant in France through maprimerenov, you certainly do. And if you didn’t insulate your French farm house with a heat pump you will be rather cold, however reasonable the EdF tariff.
Better by far to have swopped your oil boiler for a LPG boiler on a 5 year deal before last July.
I remember hearing about them as ‘the next big thing’ from a man who ran a refrigeration company around 35 years ago. He was very enthusiastic, but then again, he hoped to sell/install lots of them, which may just have coloured his opinion.
Solar panels were a very good deal when the Feed-in tariff was high, ie around 50p for every kilowatt generated, bearing in mind, the tariff was paid by the other electricity users. Ours paid for themselves within less than 4 years. We received around £2000 a year back for a 3Kw array. That’s how they pay for themselves. We didn’t install batteries.
But of course, the maximum electricity was generated when we weren’t using much, ie summer days. When you really need it, during the winter and at night, they might as well be normal roof tiles.
“The electricity is ‘free’? No it isn’t! It’s paid for by other consumers via the subsidies they are obliged to pay to fund financially unviable boondoggles like your installation and wind and solar generally”
Bingo!
If you follow Boris Johnson’s trail, you make the same fundamental error: Failure to read the detail in the small print. Something Boris and lots of others have consistently failed to do.
If you find too much battery power being used by the heater in your EV, install a heat pump.
Reminds me of when the mass murderer Blair and his cohort told us Diesel was the future.
What’s worse, is that at the time we were just staring to gain traction replacing petrol with cleaner burning LPG. If we’d have stuck with that policy we’d have had cleaner cities and wouldn’t have had all the mess we currently have with ‘clean air zones’ etc.
This would have made an excellent stepping-stone to electrification.
I note that the current fetish for electric cars is biased to those that have long distance commutes; electric cars really makes sense for these people, and much less sense for those that do few miles per year. I just don’t understand why we’re subsidising these people to continue commuting, rather than encouraging them to drive less, and using policy to force those that drive fewer miles off the road. It seems backwards to me.
Instead of electrifying all the long distance commuters, it would have made far more sense to leave them with fossil fuels and use taxation to force them to drive less, and use far more subsidies for commercial traffic in the short to intermediate distance category (20-100 miles per day, perhaps); we’re in the ludicrous position where the guy down the road is given a subsidy to maintain his lovely rural lifestyle while working in London, while the postie (travel is a necessary part of her job) drives a diesel.
Engines of Mass Destruction?
The bottom line is that the system is paying for itself. The annual return on the capital is about 16% so most of the outlay has been recovered. The electricity is free and – crucially – harvesting it is free too.
The extra cos, which is certainly there, is being paid by the rest of the country’s taxpayers. it is the cost of having an unstable and unpredictable grid. Off-grid energy generation makes the grid power demand unpredictable, and means that we have to keep back-up sources spinning inefficiently at high cost.
You are making poorer people pay for the advantage you are gaining….
Nice thinking Guy. Missing you from Time Team by the way!
You state ‘The most likely prospect is that they will become far cheaper and far more efficient.’. I believe the laws of physics will prohibit this, with margjnal improvements at best.
Those fitting these stupid systems will be poor and unhappy.
I’ve got a heat pump. It is okay most days, in that the cost isn’t far off from the oil that we used before.
The big problem is on the very cold days/nights, where efficiency falls through the floor. At exactly the same time, it is on the very cold days that most heat is lost from the building and you need it most.
What’s worse is that very cold days/nights are associated with still air (windy days are usually warmer, even in winter) and they always occur in winter when there’s less sun — thus the demand for electricity (heat pumps) is at exactly the same point in time as when there’s least renewable electricity generated. While nuclear can provide a decent base generation of electricity, the remainder will be generated by expensive reserve capacity power stations.
However, the main problem I have with heat pumps is cost. They’re not a particularly expensive technology to produce, but because of the ‘incentives’ the actual cost of installation has become huge (margins to the installers, mainly). The £15k install seems enormous, given that the heat pump itself might cost $2k, and there aren’t the same requirements for expert installation that you find with oil and gas. There is the need to consider whether the current wet heating system (radiators) is capable of supplying enough heat to the building, but that isn’t insurmountable (fan assisted radiators, rather than ripping out the whole system and putting in underfloor, etc etc).
I put my heat pump in myself — it was easy plumbing plus the cost of getting the electricity side done (outdoors, so requires cert). Cost of the heat pump was about £800.
I imagine that the nascent heat pump installation industry is slavering at the mouth at the thought of all the local councils that are thinking about installing heat pumps into all their managed properties at £20k a pop.
Oh, and there’s also maintenance to consider — I put it in about 15 years ago. It has required zero maintenance since then.
Come on! Basically the same unit as A/C units, and they need annual maintenance unless you want them giving up in mid summer/winter. Its always condensers.
Yet it has had zero maintenance. Perhaps I’m just lucky, but I don’t see what maintenance I could do — there’s nothing to maintain.
It’s the same as a fridge..how often do you maintain your fridge?
What maintenance would you do…Fans, compressors, heat exchangers, pipes, pump. They work til they don’t/
Myth. Its like an A/c Unit. And if you lived for any time in a climate that needed A/C to work you make sure they are serviced at least once a year.
Ditto heat pumps.
Grants can only be supported for a short time to get some market uptake. In reality, the grant becomes extra margin for the manufacturer/installer. Once there is some traction grants reduce and so must the end customer price.
The actual manufacturing/install cost should not be too high, once volumes ramp up.
You are living in fantasy land.
Uptick for “should”, but the reality is that the people having heat pumps installed now at those for who the costs are low, i.e. they don’t need a lot of extra insulation, or new pipework.
Once those houses are done, the amount of work required on the remaining housing stock will rise sharply. For example, I have partially insulated walls which every cavity wall installer has run a mile from, plus microbore pipework that will all have to come out. It’s not far off a rebuild.
As noted elsewhere in here, this is thanks to the UK’s building policy of “throw it up as cheaply as possible, someone will figure out how to solve it later”.
What is the coverage (m² please) of your photovoltaic setup providing “4KW”, Guy?
How much heat does a decomposing rat produce?
Genuine enquiry
Many years ago I worked on a project which was intended to measure how many active bacteria were in a sample by the temperature rise they produced when multiplying. It was accurate to millionths of a degree.
Can someone please explain how I am supposed to heat my home from the heat in the air when, for six months of the year, there isn’t any which is why I wear a coat when I go out, a jumper in the house and have proper heating on at 21 degrees?
It is a heat pump — that’s what it does.
Do you have the same problems understanding how a freezer stays cold when there’s no cold in your house to keep it cold for 12 months of the year?
I’ve tried explaining the principles of heat pumps to friends who were considering them. At the mere mention of CoP their eyes glaze over.
‘Yeah, whatever. But will I save money?’
There is always heat in the air, almost no matter how cold it is.
For example, how can you reduce the temperature of a domestic freezer from -18C to -24C without removing heat?
At 0K there is no more heat in the air. But then there is no air, either
Not an expert, Rich, but they’re essentially the opposite of fridge freezers.
A freezer compresses a medium with an electric pump. The medium is squeezed through a tiny hole whereupon it decompresses rapidly, leading to a sudden drop in its temperature (adiabatic expansion). The contents of the fridge pass their heat to the medium, which then flows to a radiator on the outside of the fridge, where the heat is dissipated into the room.
Solar hot water can repay itself – without the public dolling out money to you – in a couple of years. That’s why the PV sharks needed and got obscene amounts of governments grants. It also tells us that PV systems don’t actually produce more energy than their total energy costs. In other words, if you want to virtue signal, buy an apple tree (or solar hot water) … it’s greener
“PV systems don’t actually produce more energy than their total energy costs.”
That ceased to be true about 10 years ago.
How much does disposal cost?
Are you factoring in exploration, mining, refining, construction, distribution, installation, maintenance, and disposal?
Oh, and the energy requirements of all the meat needed to perform those processes.
It’s that last part that seems to be the hardest nettle to grasp, but if you don’t, then what’s the point of them?
I was unable to fit sufficient solar panels to my roof to make the commercial installation sensible, so I self-installed a coupe of panels on my garden shed, with an inverter in the kitchen simply plugged into a convenient mains socket. It auto-synchronises with the mains supply and supplements the grid supply. They generate enough (about 1/2kW peak) to power the regular users of power like fridge, freezers, electronics and during the summer it is good to see the power meter remain on the same reading.
The cost me about £500 and took a couple of hours to fit. I calculated the payback of the investment at less than 2 years.
Surplus power is donated to the grid.
Is your insurer aware of that inverter? They’re a major source of fires in Australia now, although granted when placed on roof tops and exposed to the elements.
As a fun twist, fire brigades there are getting hesitant to go near live systems during the day – you can’t shut off the sun.
https://theconversation.com/solar-panel-fire-season-is-all-year-round-and-its-getting-more-intense-in-australia-150751
What???? electricity from the grid is currently what? 17p per kWh so your £500 would buy 2941kWh. Your panels produce 500W peak. Even if the sun shone brightly for 8 hours EVERY DAY you would be generating 4kWh per day….. that’s 735 days to break even… that’s 2.01 years. Now, I’m guessing you are not blessed with 8 hours of glorious sunshine every day of the year and your average daily power generation will be something under 1kWh per day over the year so your break even point will be (like everyone elses) in the realm of 8 to 10 years.
Don’t forget to keep your panels clean and prey your GTI doesn’t go bang. (ask me how I know).
Heat pumps are always described as like a fridge freezer in reverse. So I say to any zealots who are contemplating one, “Turn your fridge freezer round so the motor is pointing into the kitchen and see how much heat you get”. The usual reply is “But then I won’t be able to open the fridge door”. To which I reply, “Don’t worry, you wont ever need to”.
How do you tax the sun and the wind?
Google the part you need just to heat the water for shower or bath it does not come off the heating central equipment it will require its own room in the house,
I’m not convinced there are enough firms out there that can install a heating pump system and get it working properly so it doesn’t cost a small fortune to run.
We have ASHP in conjunction with underfloor heating, and it’s a constant battle to get the heating levels comfortable. That is partly due to the design of the house, ie two large sets of patio doors that are South facing. The temperature within the house is highly dependant on how sunny it is. We can have the room thermostat set to 20.5C, but the actual temperature can frequently reach 25-26C. The underfloor heating takes hours to heat up (ie, overnight), so it’s ok first thing in the morning, but as soon as the sun hits, the temperature goes up, and it takes hours for the floor to cool down, just in time for the evening when the sun sets and it’s cold.
The bathroom radiators are a law unto themselves. They’re set to maximum, and that’s not changed during the winter, but it’s completely random as to how warm they get, and they rarely get hot.The
If the system is calling for heat for the underfloor heating, the hot water temperature drops, and can get as low as 38C, barely warm enough for a shower.
It’s c r a p. Give me a gas boiler any day, and while it’s nice not having radiators adorning the rooms, they’re much more responsive than underfloor heating.
Badly designed system. They are supposed to work with a thermal mass (concrete floor) to keep the building at a constant, acceptable temperature by running 24/7.
Personally, I would invest in blinds or curtains to keep the sun out.
We are currently using 3 electric heaters to heat a reasonably large 50s detached house due to price of heating oil. Costs about £6 a day to run in the evenings and get its nicely up to around 19c. Instant targeted and efficient heat. Air source heat pumps may work on a at best 3 to 1 ratio output/input but the running times will be much longer to increase the temps. Would it cost less with a heat pump i dont know, maybe with a good installation. But it sure wouldnt justify the cost of installation. Ground source on a constant(ish) 4 to 1 would work quite well imo if installed correctly in a well insulated house with underfloor heating especially, but again the cost cant be justified vs gas/oil at reasonable prices.
19° is bloody cold in our house.
19c at the thermostat but the rooms that the heaters are in are much warmer and the heat convects around the house quite nicely. We usually have the ch set at 19.5c anyway as its in the coldest room.
I read an investigation of a retrofitted heat pump which was (of course) under-performing and over-costing, and the engineer reckoned that when the temperature dropped below 10C that they might as well use direct electric heating in individual rooms as needed.
Still not cheap, but less pointless than sloshing 30C water around the whole house at a COP approaching 1 anyway.
PV in the U.K. is ultimately a complete indulgence. there are many better places on the planet that the same panels could be placed and be a far more effective use of resources.
Yeah, but those locations tend to be much warmer (more sun overhead), and thus do not need so much energy for heating. PV panels, like BEVs, only exist because greenwashing governments mandate their production (aside from a few niche applications, like monitoring equipment that does not need a lot of power in very remote locations without grid).
Eco energy is super expensive and you can’t change that.
But you can make eco energy look good if you artificially force up the price of carbon energy.
Got it in one, MrTea!
It’s not about being green, it’s about all the green (money) it’s transferred to.
Basically establishment land-owners.
These units are really only suited to highly insulated modern buildings that also have integrated ventilation systems per habitable room to avoid the building ‘sweating’ and causing damp to form.
As they are expensive to fit anyway, even on new builds, they are hardly economic on existing homes, even newer ones.
Retrofitting may often require bigger radiators because the system water temperature in winter is significantly lower than that of a traditiional gas or oil-fired boiler.
These systems are really suited to underfloor heating to get the highest efficiency out of them, especially to avoid using any direct electric heating boost, which is VERY expensive. They have to use high-powered electric heaters to provide hot water to the taps because the system isn’t anywhere near powerful enough to cope.
They are better at heating older-style indirect hot water cylinders, which means they are far better suited to properties with the space to house them as well as the ‘boiler’ bit.
With that in mind, air-water heat pumps really aren’t suited to flats (even newer ones) because of the lack of space for a hot water cylinder and because of the noise and space, planning and maintenance requirements for siting the outdoor units. Upgrading existing systems where pipes run within walls and floors would be ultra expensive and sometimes nigh on impossible.
The reason why scadinavian countires use them despite having a colder climate is because they bothered to design their homes FAR better than ours for many decades, often being pioneers in this tech and thus are much more easy (and thus cheaper) to convert.
As usual, us Brits tend to barrel ahead for what’s cheap and easy to do without thinking ahead, patting ourselves on the back decades later when we eventually come up with some inventive ‘solution-ish’ but which costs vast amounts of money and is not anywhere the level of improvement it should’ve been.
What obviously doesn’t help here is that as we’ve got addicted to electricity generation by natural gas and cutting back on nuclear as well as coal/oil, it means we now at the mercy of the wholesale market for something we don’t have anywhere as much of as we used to, especially as we’re not taking advantage of shale borne reserves.
Before the April price hikes, the price of electricty per kWh was around 5-6x that of gas. AT BEST, an air-water heat pump system (including when providing hot water to taps) is has a coefficient of performance (CoP) of 4 (for every 1kW of electricity used, it removes 4kW from the outside air and converts it to useful heat indoors).
In reality, that tends to happen in warmer months in late spring and early Autumn, and combined with the direct electric heating boost required to heat hot water to taps, the CoP in the coldest times (i.e. -5degC or below) is far less, probably much nearer 1-1.5. The information I’ve seen suggests average COP over the year of about 2.5 for a mild English climate (so worse as you get further North).
As such, they are currently going to cost you 2-4x as much as a gas fired boiler to run, but anywhere from 3x to 10x as much to retrofit, depending on the circumstances.
Even using solar PV panels to offset this (fine for many houses, not practical or even legal [the lease may prohibit them] for most flats) is ok at best, but as an aryicle I read today said, utility companies pay a pittance to customers in comparison to they charge. Buying expensive ‘battery walls’ to store/use PV electricity is really only an option for the well-heeled who also have the space to house them and the ancillary equipment.
When was Build Back Better and Agenda 21/30 ever going to financially worthwhile for the masses?
Houses in the UK are generally built inside out, meaning most of the thermal mass (stone, brick) is on the outside, with a layer of insulation, then materials with low thermal mass on the inside (plasterboard, wood panel).
The best houses (Norway) do it the right way around – meaning thermal mass on the inside, then insulation on the outside which is protected from the elements by a thin layer of shiplap. The result is a cool home in hot weather, and a home which is a lot easier to keep warm in cold weather.
Many are like that, but not all. My house is built with heavy concrete block walls, brick on the outside + insulation between. Quite different thermally compared with another common structure with timber framing inside plus brick outside walls. On hot days in the Summer, my place is much cooler than outside. On the negative side, because it’s quite stable, it’s hard to vary the temperature a lot. It has some old fashioned electric storage heaters for some rooms (zero maintenance cost for over 35 years), and a gas fire as well. Thus the night rate charged heaters are used to maintain a reasonable minimum 24/7, with gas used to top up when needed.
What we need is some lucky town to be nominated and to have these things installed across all the building types in that town and to see how they get on over the course of a few years.
My guess is the endeavour will be considered to be crap by the victims.
Don’t suggest it to your MP. Or mine!
Stroud should be nominated… it’s where the XR nonsense seems to have originated. They should be first in line to practice what they preach.
Brighton seems like an obvious victi- I mean, candidate.
Beneficiary of this liability.
Ten new houses are being built on a former paddock next to the village hall: 7 for nice people and 3 tiny ones for riff-raff shipped in from elsewhere.
No sign of heat pumps but no chimneys either: detached new builds have always had chimneys until now.
If one lives in a flat; or a terraced house with a tiny back yard or a back-to-back terrace with no back exit – just a front door – where are the heat pump monsters going to be situated? It’s bad enough trying to find space for the many multi coloured – brown, grey, blue, green – recycling dustbins.
I live in New Zealand where heat pumps are the main source of heating. Generally pretty effective here they have one major drawback as far as the UK is concerned – they don’t work particularly well in cold temperatures. When temps get to around -3C they tend to cut off quite regularly to prevent the unit from overheating. Good luck guys.
Yet another part of the Kintyre peninsula in Scotland is about to get a wind farm. It’s at the stage where objections will be considered. Considered and then ignored. It’s a done deal. The visual impact will be noticeable from the Cowal peninsula and Arran but hey, ho it’s all for the good of the people.
‘Heat pumps are at an early stage of development’
Not true! They’ve been in existence since the late 1800’s. As they are basically the same as a fridge they are highly developed and as close to maximum efficiency as they’ll ever be. The laws of thermodynamics simply won’t allow much more improvement.
We had an air source pump fitted along with 4kw solar panel system about five years ago. The whole system cost just under £20,000 including the large radiators. Admittedly this was fitted to a new build house and we did increase the insulation, which you do need to do. But the system does work well in is cheap to run. But I agree it would be very costly to try and retro- fit it to older properties.
I feel compelled to note that once you’ve done all the insulation, that you’d see reductions in the bills for a gas boiler.
It’s also telling that even the newest build homes still aren’t coming with sufficient insulation.
Those Insulate Britain eco-loons do actually have a point, even though they’re putting it across like angry infants.
29 million properties at the absolute fantasy minimum figure of just 2kW per property is 58GW of new load on the grid. Add another 10GW or so for electric vehicles (200 billion vehicle miles at current best electric vehicle efficiency).
As I write this, Gridwatch reckons that the total national grid load is 38.2GW, residential, commerce and industrial. Wind is (at best) supplying 1.21GW of that.
On cold, dark, still winter mornings when everybody’s heating comes on at much the same time, and there’s negative[*] wind and solar, we will either supply that demand with gas, coal, nuclear, hydro (already capped out for locations) and tidal, or we won’t.
If we don’t, then it becomes an existential question of who gets heating and lights and their cars charged and who doesn’t.
Surely to God there must be some actual adults involved in this process who will call a halt to this literal act of national suicide.
[*] When the wind isn’t blowing just right, bird mincers draw power from the grid to rotate the turbines, either to try and spin them up, or to feather them and avoid damage.
I think heat pumps have been used in the Scandinavian countries for decades, but they seem to have wood burners for heat, and triple glazing and very well insulated houses to keep the heat in. My terraced is a bit different.
One correction. Heat pumps are *not* new technology with scope for large reductions in capital and operating costs. In 1991 I lived in a house in Washington DC heated (and cooled) by a heat pump though it wasn’t particularly warm in winter. They have been widely used in the US, Scandinavia and elsewhere for 3 decades. In all cases they are primarily used where electricity prices are low and for new-build properties with good insulation and (usually) heated by warm air systems rather than warm/hot water systems. ASHPs are basically derivatives of aircon systems that have been installed and refined for decades.
Heat Pumps are just split air conditioners that work in reverse. They have been around for 80 years. Although efficiencies have improved they are about as good as they will get. There will be no drastic transformations. And as the AC units have shown, most are high maintence items that have a 12 to 15 year life limit.
The problem with heat pumps isn’t the lack of efficiency. Thermodynamics tell you that they are much more efficient than heat engines (in practice 200 – 300%). Yes they are effectively fridges. But in a fridge, the bottom temperature is fixed. Once your fridge/freezer reaches a specific temp the pumping stops. The fridge is also well insulated so it takes a long time to warm if turned off. However, with a heat pump it is the upper temp that is fixed. If your house is very well insulated then yes it should stop pumping, but heat losses tend to mean that it will lose heat over night. So you need to pump heat from your ground source to your house for a period of time. During that time the temp of your heat source will drop. The amount of electricity needed depends on the temp difference. The greater the difference, the more work required. Still 300% efficient but needing a lot more electricity. The assumption for heat pumps is that heat will flow in from the surrounding soil to replace the heat that’s been taken out. Unfortunately soil is a very good insulator which means heat doesn’t flow easily through it. The end result is that the soil gets colder and colder and colder. A heat pump installed in a canal (the water was the heat source) led to it freezing over, which of course it would. The physics tell you that. Gas boilers are very efficient. Good levels of insulation will reduce demand for energy better than any heat pumps will.
It’s worth noting that only about 35% of the energy in the gas used to supply a power station actually reaches your home due to losses in producing and transmitting the electricity.
A good rule of thumb is that an air source heat pump operates with an average coefficient of performance of 2.5. ie 1kW of electricity will produce 2.5kW of heat in your home.
So 1kW of energy in the original gas becomes .35kW at your house multiplied by CoP of 2.5 gives 0.875 kW of heat in your home. ie the entire system (power station, transmission grid and heat pump) is about 87.5% efficient.
Using a modern gas boiler, 1kW of gas puts about 0.93kW of heat into your home so is 93% efficient.
By my maths 93% is better than 87.5%.
Why not burn the gas in your own home and save money on supply and save money on installation? Also, if you combine an air source heat pump with a smart meter you have handed the Government the power to turn off your heating at their will. It will happen. I promise you.
I’ve got bog standard central heating which for the most part I don’t use, when i grew up you only got heat when the living room fire was lit which tended to be in the evening.
Used to marvel how jack frost would decorate the inside of my bedroom window. peace. x