I bought a Heat Pump

Andyj007

Rodders53 said:

Reed_Richards said:

I've just realised that I passed the 2-year anniversary of getting the heat pump.  My average consumption per year has been 5977 kWh of electricity.

The best comparison I can make is that my old oil boiler used 1936 litres of oil in 367 days.  That would equate to 20,032 kWh of heat if my boiler was 100% efficient.  It was a condensing boiler from 2012 so I don't know exactly what a realistic efficiency figure would be.      

You'd not be far wrong with 90% as an estimate as I doubt most oil boilers condense all the time.  Or just 18 MWh as near as makes no difference... cf 6 MWh per annum on the heat pump...  COP of 3 - rather impressive.

My circa 2006 Grant Vortex 15/26 has a claimed SEDBUK efficiency of 95% = 19 MWh and a COP of 3.17 if you would prefer the bigger number?

Today's oil price is 87-90p per litre in my area and SVT is 33.39p/kWh (both plus vat).  So oil is cheaper. but not so 'green'.

and that is exactly why ASHP technology is utterly flawed..IMO  all that trouble and expense, setting up , monitoring, praying your system works, just  to break even on what an oil or gas system would work at.. to say electric is green is far from the truth (in this country anyway) so basically an expensive excersise.  these systems are soon to be bullied into every poorly built new build, jo public is going to go beserk when the running costs skyrocket to keep his house as warm as he used to have his gas / oil house.
"have you been miss sold an ashp"  will be a common theme ..  
its just not a system for average joe ..  

Mstty

@Andyj007

For us the year it has taken to get on top of our ASHP was worth it in environmental terms alone.



Let alone the fact we are heating and producing hot water for a 4/5 bedroom home for the yearly cost of our previous 3 bedroom gas and electricity supplied home.

You are right though lazy people not wanting to learn will struggle, will be utterly floored by ASHP technology and won't be able to comprehend the real benefits. Luckily they are too lazy to go bezerk and may just moan from their arm chair. 

Screwdriva

Andyj007 said:

and that is exactly why ASHP technology is utterly flawed..IMO  all that trouble and expense, setting up , monitoring, praying your system works, just  to break even on what an oil or gas system would work at.. to say electric is green is far from the truth (in this country anyway) so basically an expensive excersise.  these systems are soon to be bullied into every poorly built new build, jo public is going to go beserk when the running costs skyrocket to keep his house as warm as he used to have his gas / oil house.

I don't have a heat pump and often wonder if investing in an ultra efficient gas boiler last year was a wise investment. Financially, it has proven to to be but I suspect integration will likely drive innovation for upcoming generations of home heating appliances. This will be the game changer in my humble view!

Imagine an ASHP that can communicate with the hot water diverter, EV charger & the inverter/battery to decide the cheapest time to run all of the above seamlessly via the same app interface? Myenergi looks primed to launch their own branded heat pump, similar to their Libbi battery, and when that happens, I will likely take the plunge. Shouldn't be too long of a wait!

Reed_Richards

When I got my heat pump in December 2020 it was more expensive to run than mains gas heating (we don't have mains gas) and about on a par with the oil heating it replaced.  Two years later it is now on a par with mains gas heating but now costs maybe half as much again to run as oil heating.

Quite apart from the running costs, it uses about one third of the electricity than the equivalent kWh of fuel that a gas or oil boiler would use.

Properly installed it can be set-and-forget for most customers.  I have a science background so I'm interested in exactly how it works and whether the settings can be adjusted to make it a bit more efficient.  But by 2030 (or whenever) I expect that any such tweaks and improvements in efficiency well be well-understood and implemented by the manufacturer and/or the installer.  Or there could be a plethora of poorly-trained installers messing up; I hope not.       

Andyj007

"Quite apart from the running costs,"  and there it is.. you just simple cannot go building new houses , that cost more to run and expect people to be happy .  sure there are those like you and I who like to think we are contributing with clean energy consumption, but we are the minority.  
ASHP need to prove like for like they are cheaper or as stable as existing gas / oil ..  at present they are wide of the mark. work just about  when installed propperly and fail miserbly if installed opr porrly designed..    take a winter like we had a few years back with 8 weeks of temps at 3 or below people just cannot afford to run ashp for long periods like that  when ASHP  are at there worst efficiency.   it will be a case of weve spent a collosal amount  and our house wasnt even warm .. waht are they supposed to do for supplementary heating when the GOVt are trying their best to prevent log burners   there are enough threads on forums already complaining of these recent temps with high running costs. and cold houses . its just not sustainable to roll out mainstream..    

Reed_Richards

I would have thought the best solution for new homes is to ensure they are built with very high standards of insulation so they don't cost a lot to heat, whatever form of heating was used.

I think most heat pumps are reasonable well designed, although there may be room for technical improvements.  Even gas boilers, which have been around for a very long time, are being made more efficient by building heating systems that operate at lower water temperatures than hitherto.  Probably the worst thing you can do with a heat pump is expect it to serve as a drop-in replacement for another type of boiler but if it is installed to MCS standards that won't happen.  I would also be wary of buying a new house with a heat pump and make sure the housebuilder did not subcontract someone to do it on the cheap.

I cannot remember the long cold winter you are referring to.  The coldest winters in living memory were 1947 and 1963.  https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/case-studies/severe-winters .  If there was a prolonged cold spell whilst all fuel prices are so high then I don't think heat pump owners will be the only ones in difficulty.       

Martyn1981

Andyj007 said:

ASHP need to prove like for like they are cheaper or as stable as existing gas / oil ..  at present they are wide of the mark.   

Actually they only need to be cheaper than oil and gas, when the externality costs of FF are included.

Heatpumps work, obviously they do. Many countries far colder than the UK use them.

A heatpump may consume more energy in a poorly built, and poorly insulated building, but so will an oil or gas boiler. So the problem isn't the heatpump, but the UK's abnormaly poor housing stock v's most of Europe.

There is little point in fighting the shift to HP's, as that is simply inevitable, there is no alternative*, so improving homes, and installing appropriate HP's, with falling costs as they gather momentum, is simply what will happen, whether we like it or not.

*Forget H2 boilers, burning green hydrogen, that's a busted flush. With the green leccy to H2 process losing around 50% of the enrgy, v's an ASHP with a COP of 3 (in the UK), then H2 boilers provide 1/6th of the heat per unit of green leccy. Or to put it another way, we'd have to generate 6x as much leccy for home space heating via H2.

In the UK we consume ~300TWh of gas for domestic space heating each year, so an additional 100TWh of leccy (UK annual average is around 350TWh) will be needed to displace that gas with HP's. +100TWh, tough but entirely doable, but producing an extra 600TWh, compressed into half a year, is not viable.

Mstty

I suspect many are getting their  information from sources such as that below. Stating £8 an hour to run a heat pump.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1728350/UK-heating-bill-Wales-Warm-Home-Discount-eligibility/amp

Reed_Richards

The last few days have not been too cold or too far off normal for the time of year.  My heat pump has been averaging something like 1 kWh per hour (24 kWh per day) for heat and hot water so that's 34p per hour.  My hot water is "luxury" near-instant hot water; if I turned off the recirculation loop I could probably save myself a kWh or two per day.  

Mstty

23kwh a day monthly average for January for all heating and hot water here.

On 24/7 no setback overnight.

Happy with that given the cold spell and we could even take the weather compensation curve down a degree or two if we want to save a bit more energy.

Overall over 100kwh saving on last Jan 2022 and the weather was remarkably similar