Octopus Heat Pumps

Nick_Dr1

Nick_Dr1 said:

Nick_Dr1 said:

Did the web form thing a couple of weeks ago, got a price, rang them up to check it (seemed very cheap - now even cheaper due to the extra £2500, but yes, included all extra radiators if necessary), got a survey happening next week. So service so far is great, Lets see what the survey reveals!

An update: Had the survey today. Took about 4 hours. Did all kinds of measurements and calculations and said we were fine for a heat pump and our original web quote was valid. We now need to sort out a installation date, estimated about 4 months away.
Note we have 10mm microbore and Octopus are happy to install with that in place. They have done their own research and since May have been ok with microbore (but not plastic pipes). Radiators are being replaced. 10.5kW heat pump calculated, big water cylinder and even offered to include the iboost i have in the system in the price. So far so good.

Another update: As well as having the right EPC (which we got by installing extra loft insulation) you also have to notify your local electricity network who can then give permission to connect the heatpump to the electricity supply. Its the same with solar and EV chargers. Normally its not an issue but in our case they weren't happy and offered to quote for the necessary work to strengthen the grid. They give themselves 62 days to do this and allow you 10 days to accept it.
In our case they wanted to convert the house to 3 phase but would only do it if I dug up the road and the 30m distance to the house connection first. They would then lay the cable and connect it, but I would also have to make sure that Octopus were available that day to fit a three phase meter etc.
Remember this is just to connect a heatpump which adds an additional load of about 3kW according to the spec sheet. Nothing special about the house. Of course its impossible to get a sensible reason out of them but eventually they agreed it was a silly idea and we could go ahead with the original plan.
We are now waiting for confirmation of an installation date, but its likely to be July now.

mickyduck55

Quite a large install team

Paid my £500 deposit in March, install started today, to be fair I have had a couple of issue, planning permission delayed it by months and then it was decided on my first install date (November) that the siting of the ASHP unit was sub optimal.  I did get a lovely bunch of flowers to say thanks for being patient.  Chatting to the guys today Octopus are recruiting as fast as they can and anecdotally they said after the grant went up to £7500 they had 1000s of enquiries.

AlfaFoxtrot

murmeltier said:

Exiled_Tyke said:

Same for me. Although my last 'thanks for waiting' email was on the 25th Dec. 

Same here. Paid the £500 end of November. Still waiting. Last email was on 26/12.

If anyone has got a survey done recently, would be interesting to know how long the wait was.

Paid deposit for Octopus survey in mid-September (just after the BUS grant went up), had a survey carried out mid-January. Now waiting for final quote (been told it could be 7-10 working days).

Interestingly, have Heat Geek (via Ovo) coming out this week so will be interesting to compare.

Spies

So looking at the vaillant arotherm, the COP according to spec is between 3 and 4, my gas is 4p a unit, so who is paying 12-16p for their electric for this to give price parity?

Screwdriva

The majority of AroTherm+ installations by the Heat Geeks achieve SCOPs of ~3.5 currently, with the odd exception. This will improve over the next decade but anybody's guess if 4 or 5 will be the new norm?

Without batteries and an EV, it's quite hard to import electricity at ~15p. 

Meatballs

Spies said:

So looking at the vaillant arotherm, the COP according to spec is between 3 and 4, my gas is 4p a unit, so who is paying 12-16p for their electric for this to give price parity?

It is 4p? Or it's currently 4p on octopus tracker but liable to change? The current standard rates are around 7.29p..

Screwdriva

It hovers around 4.5p on Tracker. A bit unfair to compare a standard gas tariff to an intelligent electricity tariff in my view. 

Reed_Richards

Spies said:

So looking at the vaillant arotherm, the COP according to spec is between 3 and 4, my gas is 4p a unit, so who is paying 12-16p for their electric for this to give price parity?

Me; I pay 9.5p per kWh for my electricity.  Now admittedly this is only between midnight and 07:00 but I offer this in the same spirit of dubious comparisons.  

Netexporter

so who is paying 12-16p for their electric for this to give price parity?

I got my latest bill, this morning. I paid 12.44p/kWh on average, for the past month, and that was using very little overnight electricity, which would have brought the average even lower.

michaels

I pay about 9p per unit for electricity but that is with a battery. but hopefully 45kwh of storage would be enough to run a heat pump too.  I believe gas is currently about 7.6p per unit unless you want to risk a tracker tariff.