High Electric Bills with new ASHP

matelodave

I wondered why they seemed to be fitting leccy meters to heatpump installations. My system was installed in 2010, four years before the RHI came into effect and they were still discussing how they were going to implement it and what they were going to pay. 

Originally the RHI was going to be more like FIT scheme and was going to pay out a lot more per kwh and for 20 years but it got watered down quite a bit by the time it was implemented. I think the government of the day realised how generous the solar FIT scheme was going to be and didn't want to be saddled with an ongoing ginormous bill

As we were doing a major refurb I decided to go for a heatpump instead of oil or lpg despite the RHI, so the fact that it did eventually come into being was a bonus rather than a reason for doing it.  The extra cost at the time was about £3.5k-£4k more than an oil boiler installation (including tank etc) and probably around £4k over the cost of an LPG boiler installation.

We have the benefit of reasonable energy bills. We still only pay £76 a month which is pretty good as we are at home all day and the heating is running virtually 24/7 at this time of the year  (our early leccy bills were a lot less than the combined gas/leccy bills in our previous house).