Air Source heat Pump & Electric Car

stormin_norman_3

I have just bought a new property that has an air source pump, quickly followed by and electric car. I am after advice regarding tariffs , any pitfalls to avoid and any general advice as I've never run either. 
I was wondering if it would be worth installing solar panels keeping in mind the usage of the electric car and heating/hot water system. 

Thankyou in advance.

matelodave

At this time of the year solaor panels wont do much to either charge the car or power the heatpump as the days are short, the sun doesn't shine as much as it does in the summer. Both the leccy car and heatpump use most energy when its cold dark and wet and so don't really match with solar which produce most energy when you dont actually need it.

You need to decide when you are going to heat the house as heatpumps need to use power continuously when heating so you dont want a tariff that's extra cheap when you are in bed asleep and everso expensive when you want to heat the house.

However you might want a tariff that's super cheap overnight to charge your car so you need to establish how much energy you use and when you are going to use it to decide which is the optimum tariff.  Although if you dont do many miles perhaps you don't need extra cheap leccy overnight to charge the car.

Our heatpump can chew its way through 40-60kwh a day when its cold but not a lot overnight unless the temperature is very low.  Likewise it only uses about 2kwh a day in the summer when its just heating hot water

Perhaps you should do some serious energy monitoring and some sums to get a feel for how much you use, when you are using it and what is using it all to be able to make an informed decision.

Lashing out another £5-£10k on solar panels and a battery might not be everso cost effective especially if its going to take 10-15 years to break even.

Reed_Richards

I have an Air Source Heat Pump and also solar panels with a battery.  I don't have an electric car.  At this time of year I have to set my battery to a minimum charge level of 50% because it slowly loses charge when there is no sun for days on end.  When the sun does come out I can get the charge level up above 50% but then the ASHP comes on and eats it all up in no time and I'm back to 50%.  So at the moment I use all the electricity I generate but this is a tiny amount compared with summer.

In summer I don't need the house heated and the solar panels generate more electricity than I know what to do with.  One thing I do is heat the hot water using the immersion heater and my spare solar electricity.  I use the immersion heater because it requires 3 kW which is better matched to the output of my solar panels than the ASHP.