Households in England and Wales to be offered new £5,000 Government grant from April 2022 19 October 2021 at 7:43PM in Energy 39 replies 3.4K views

MSE_Sophie

Brits wanting to fit a low-carbon heat pump in their homes in England and Wales could receive a £5,000 grant from the Government to help replace less efficient gas boilers from April 2022.

Read the full story:

Households in England and Wales to be offered new £5,000 Government grant from April 2022 to help replace gas boilers with heat pumps

If you haven’t already, join the forum to reply.

2Protons

The big question everyone seems to have missed here is where is all of this electricity going to come from (look at Texas in February 2021 for an example of what can go wrong) to power these heat pumps particularly during windless artic cold night when even Southern England is well below -5ºc as the only realistic way with current technology is (rarely used and probably uneconomic) oil fuelled generation - OCGTs and diesel generators when we are already on the verge of power cuts this winter. 

wittynamegoeshere said:

Waiting to read all the (devil in the) details.

I wonder if they will stop requiring the systems to be air to water heater pumps to qualify for these government schemes when mini split air to air heater pumps make a lot more sense instead of low temperature radiators as they would have a higher COP and will they be required to have a COP of at least 3 at -18ºc. Then has a feasibility assessment being done on all of this as the only realistic replacement of natural gas central heating (don't forget about on demand hot water and the space that would be needed for hot water tanks) with current technology is district heating with inter-seasonal heat storage.

DiseasedBunny

Just wait for all these installation costs too ncrease by, ooh let me guess, £5k?

FreeBear

wittynamegoeshere said: Looks good, hopefully much simpler than the previous very complicated system.

The scheme will be set up so that there are countless businesses with their finger in the pie skimming off their cut. You'll need an EPC, then have to bung out for thermal improvements before being considered for any grant. Then you will have to use one of a limited number of "certified" installers.. The grant will also likely be means tested to the point where the people who would qualify can't actually afford the rest of the required work.

[Deleted User]

Couldn't trust the government to run a bath let alone something like this but 5 grand, but overall seems not enough for a country wide scheme(?), seems nice but I have no idea how much it is to correctly install and fettle to make it good to replace existing boiler. Especially as I am three years into a new boiler and just had seven leaking rads replaced.

MWT

half_empty said:

Especially as I am three years into a new boiler and just had seven leaking rads replaced.

You wouldn't be a prime candidate for a replacement right now I'd say.

Waiting may also result in better, cheaper solutions over the next 5 years or so.

Don't wait until it fails though or you get back into that loop of no time to work out an alternative and just throwing in another gas boiler is the easy/cheap solution.

brewerdave

wittynamegoeshere said:

Does anyone know if there's an official document anywhere with written terms and conditions?  All I've seen are reports of it being announced.

My ideal outcome would be that they send me a £5000 gift card that I can spend on one.  I'm sure it won't be this simple but I hope it's going to be a lot simpler than the previous system which basically amounted to extra free profit for the installer, as it required them to do pretty much everything to the extent that the price was completely opaque.

Our house isn't yet ready, I would like to just get the thing installed with one or two token radiators then refurbish and refloor each room and add it to the heating system as I go.  I did this at the previous house with a bas boiler and it worked really smoothly and saved £1000s plus loads of upheaval.

AFAIA no actual details have been published. Can't see your partial install qualifying however.
I very much doubt if they will make it a simple scheme - by the time the civil service have got involved ,it will need multiple surveys, many forms and ,as you suspect, will be a license for the cowboys (sorry -installers) to inflate all the prices to the point where only the wealthy will be able to afford a fully specified system.
And are the manufacturers going to be able to produce the heat pumps needed in the relatively short timescales  ?  I suspect not !!

Dolor

brewerdave said:

wittynamegoeshere said:

Does anyone know if there's an official document anywhere with written terms and conditions?  All I've seen are reports of it being announced.

My ideal outcome would be that they send me a £5000 gift card that I can spend on one.  I'm sure it won't be this simple but I hope it's going to be a lot simpler than the previous system which basically amounted to extra free profit for the installer, as it required them to do pretty much everything to the extent that the price was completely opaque.

Our house isn't yet ready, I would like to just get the thing installed with one or two token radiators then refurbish and refloor each room and add it to the heating system as I go.  I did this at the previous house with a bas boiler and it worked really smoothly and saved £1000s plus loads of upheaval.

AFAIA no actual details have been published. Can't see your partial install qualifying however.
I very much doubt if they will make it a simple scheme - by the time the civil service have got involved ,it will need multiple surveys, many forms and ,as you suspect, will be a license for the cowboys (sorry -installers) to inflate all the prices to the point where only the wealthy will be able to afford a fully specified system.
And are the manufacturers going to be able to produce the heat pumps needed in the relatively short timescales  ?  I suspect not !!

I am sure that the fossil-fuelled factories in Asia are poised to supply all units that we need - superconductor supplies permitting. 

worlestone

wittynamegoeshere said:

I don't think £5k is enough to swing the balance for anyone with a gas supply.

For anyone like us without gas, I was going to get one anyway so it's essentially free money.  Except for the fact that it will probably just result in prices being artificially high, so really it's a gift from the govt to the installers.

I expect that, like us, you'll not qualify if you don't have gas to replace.  We are all electric, not gas supply to the village, so buy default we use 'green energy', not carbon usage to decrease which is what this initiative is about.  Once again we miss out, just like the Green Deal last year

QrizB

worlestone said:

I expect that, like us, you'll not qualify if you don't have gas to replace.  We are all electric, not gas supply to the village, so buy default we use 'green energy', not carbon usage to decrease which is what this initiative is about.  Once again we miss out, just like the Green Deal last year

Electricity isn't green yet; as I type it's around 200g CO2/kWh. Not far off the 227g/kWh for burning natural gas.

https://electricityinfo.org/forecast-carbon-intensity/

Sea_Shell

QrizB said:

worlestone said:

I expect that, like us, you'll not qualify if you don't have gas to replace.  We are all electric, not gas supply to the village, so buy default we use 'green energy', not carbon usage to decrease which is what this initiative is about.  Once again we miss out, just like the Green Deal last year

Electricity isn't green yet; as I type it's around 200g CO2/kWh. Not far off the 227g/kWh for burning natural gas.

https://electricityinfo.org/forecast-carbon-intensity/

That's a great website, full of really interesting data.   Thanks.