Bast Heat Pump Tariff.

Ripppers

Morning All.
We are due to have a new heat pump installed early February, this will replace an old oil boiler. My question is which supplier and tariff would people recommend.
Thanks.

IOWJJBTM2025

There is no quick answer to your question as there are so many variables. As you have not got the heat pump installed yet I assume that you dont yet know what your electric requirements would be.
Do you have Solar, Battery Power wall, Electric Car? Are you able to get rid of gas supply?
If you just have a heat pump then suggest you best guess how much Electric you will use over the year including your current usage. Put all your info into the MSE Cheap Energy Club and they will compare the available tariffs.
Dont forget that any fixed tariff currently shown should also get a further discount after April'26 for the government budget discount. Have a look on MSE 'Should I fix my energy Supply' and there is some advice around which suppliers have committed to pass on the saving.

Netexporter

Octopus has the widest selection of ToU (time of use) tariffs, although none are an ideal fit on their own. First of all, have you got a working smart meter? Without that then just the cheapest fixed rate you can find will be best.

You need to tell us what other electro-tech you've got/are planning; EV, solar, home batteries etc. Also, what is your lifestyle; typical 9-5, WFH, retired, etc.

Ripppers

Thanks for the replies, we have no solar, no EV and no gas on the premises, we are a retired couple and live in a 3 bedroom bungalow.

matelodave

As said above, there are a multitude of tariffs around which may or may not suit your technology or lifestyle. Bear in mind than many tariffs with a cheaper low/off peak period tend to compensate with a much higher cost peak period so you really need to work out how you intend to operate the system and other stuff in the household to maximise the benefit of off-peak periods to ensure that you dont end up cold during peak periods or waiting to cook meals/ do washing etc until the peak period is over.

IMO, as a long standing heatpump user (15 years) I'd spend some time trying to optimise the settings and timings to suit your lifestyle and logging when you are using energy to see how you can adjust your usage to suit a ToU tariff rather than just jumping in and trying to make system fit before you know how it operates (beware trying to run it like a gas boiler).

As suggested above, having solar and batteries will allow more flexible use of ToU tariffs but I'm not convince that a heatpump on its own really benefits, especially if you are retired and at home all day. Learn how to drive it properly and understand how it works.

We run our system 24/7 gently ticking over and there's no way I could persuade SWMBO to put up a with a cold period to avoid peak times or to maximise energy usage at off peak times either for eating, washing or other stuff so we just go for the cheapest single rate tariff and optimise the system setting keep us warm and cozy 24/7.

Spoonie_Turtle

We are quite heavy electricity users as well as the heat pump (relatively heavy baseload, 10,000kWh total usage/year) and Agile has worked out cheapest for us. 

Next would be Tracker, and then Cosy - but that may be partly because we don't optimise usage for the Cosy periods.  Agile and Cosy have the same peak period, we don't avoid it but obviously avoid any unnecessary usage like the dishwasher or shower or washing machine during that time.

There's also a FreePhase tariff by … I think EDF, which is kind of a simplified, smoothed out version of Agile.

For reference we have the heating off overnight (11pm-5am) and during the peak period (4-7pm).  Not ideal but we don't have a setback function, hopefully yours is a better model that does if you want it for overnight.


If you don't have a smart meter, I think Fuse has flat rate tariffs below SVT.  They've been going a few years now and I haven't heard of members having problems, so hopefully not in danger of going bust like Tomato.