Man ‘facing £7,000 energy bill’ after switching to £25,000 government-backed ‘green’ heat pump
By Paul Homewood
h/t Tallbloke
From the Independent:
A man claims he is facing a £7,000 energy bill after replacing his heating system with a £25,000 Government-backed ‘green’ heat pump.
Officials are currently providing grants for up to £5,000 to home owners who remove a gas central heating and hot water system and replace it with a heat pump.
But the new system, backed by many in the green lobby, has apparently left many UK homeowners in the cold.
Steve Mason, 58, spent thousands on the new system and says he has seen his bills rocket despite his thermostat being set at just 17 degrees.
Based on the same technology as refrigerators, the air pump pulls heat out from outside air and into the house, and can be run on renewably generated electricity, making them carbon neutral.
However with the highest electricity prices and the least insulated homes in Europe, early adopters are counting the cost of going green.
Steve, a company director from Harlaxton, Lincolnshire, who started using the system in July said: “The equipment cost £17,000, then there was the installation so add another £10,000 at least.
“We moved back into the house in July when the weather was warm. In the summer months our monthly bills are roughly £280 per month, spring and autumn will be about £500 per month and winter months about £850.
“Then a yearly total will be about £6,000 to £7,000. My electric deal ends in March, so my tariff will increase.
“We could therefore be paying, well I don’t really want to think about it.
‘’Only the stupendously wealthy can afford the figure in my head, and the joint incomes of me and my wife are nowhere near.
When asked about the positive aspects of investing in the air pump, Steve added: “I could say we are using some green non-polluting energy and Greta Thunberg will be pleased.
“However, as we have set the room temperatures to 17 degrees to save money and it’s minus three outside, we have a log burner chomping its way through a forest and sending smoke up the chimney – the irony should not be lost here.”
Steve predicts that his electricity bill for this month alone could reach £1,000, while his annual bill would be roughly double the price of his previous set-up.
He received £5,000 from the government as a grant for the pump, but still cannot see the economic viability of the switch.
He says two other families in his village who also have a heat pump are facing similar issues, one of which is having to use two log burning stoves alongside their pump during colder days.
“We thought that since the government are championing Air Source Heat Pumps as one of the ‘green’ ways forward then this is the avenue we would go down.
“But my wife and I are struggling to see how the installation and running costs of the system makes economic and functional sense.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/energy-bills-gas-government-green-pump-b2248520.html
I suspect a lot more people will find out they have been conned by the renewable lobby.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like quite a large detached house, and probably quite old too- note the comment “we moved back into the house in July”, suggesting quite a lot of work was involved. I suspect too that it is poorly insulated.
Nevertheless the figures suggest the heat pump is using almost as much energy as his gas boiler did. When the thermostat has to be set at 17C to achieve even this, it is time to start worrying!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
“But my wife and I are struggling to see how the installation and running costs of the system makes economic and functional sense.”
Just plain struggling, with these overpriced and under-powered contraptions.
UNLESS your dwelling has northern Scandinavian levels of insulation, heat pumps WILL NOT keep your home ‘toasty’. -IF your old boiler is shot, be it gas or oil, REPLACE IT with a NEW one!
asap!
No good deed never goes unpunished.
Caveat emptor?
I’d be interested to know the kw rating of the pump – and it’s something this poor s*d should have found out prior to the insane installation. If you know the kw of the pump, you can work the nightmarish running costs out quite easily as the systems are designed to run 24/7 for much of the year. So, shall we say (very generously) 6 months @ 100% and 6 months at 50%? That’s an average of 75% usage – not unreasonable. At 1kw that would result in roughly 6,570 kwh for the year. But, wait a minute, a decent sized house could need a 5kw heat pump or even more. 5kw would result in 32,850 kwh and that’s just for the pump, leave alone any other electricity used in the house. Oh, and the cost of a kwh in the UK now is now over 50p reduced temporarily to 34p by the energy price guarantee.
Do the maths, sadly our man didn’t. Even if my figures are 50% out, the electricity costs of running one of these monstrosities are staggering, and all to achieve what?
Heat pumps are usually designed for air conditioning (cooling), with the machinery outside the house. In the UK, the pumps should be designed for heating, with the machinery inside.
See my post below for details. It is a 16kW unit fitted in a reasonably modern 4 bed detached. No wonder it is costing a fortune!
Old and poorly insulated house or not, the gas boiler would have faced the same situation before it’s replacement. He doesn’t mention that his gas boiler was inadequate so we can assume it heated the house adequately at a lot less cost than the heat pump.
You’d have thought that a company director would have had the sense to check the costs and running costs of heat pumps before he bought.
Indeed caveat emptor. What I cannot understand is how people think that electricity at £0.5 kWh is going to be cheaper than gas at £0.1 kWh. As for the COP of air source heat pumps then 2:1 is more realistic and at -5 deg C 1.7 more likely. As has been pointed out many times these monsters need to be run almost continuously, whereas with a gas boiler you can at least turn it down when you are not at home. The money would have been better spent on insulation. Lambs to the slaughter.
When it comes to pauperising the public politicians may never acknowledge their agency: heat pumps, electric cars , you name it. The list of ‘frighteners’ by the prophets of doom that remain unfulfilled is also due its annual re-visit. Indeed the list should be cumulative and not just comprise the most recent 12 months abortive shroud wavings.
The Mirror also ran this article (word for word) and included photography. Firstly it is a modern detached house (probably 4 bedder). The ASHP is a “Midea M Thermal R32 Monobloc Air to Water Heat Pump”
https://mideauk.co.uk/products/m-thermal-r32-monobloc-air-to-water-heat-pump/
I believe it is the 16kW model (from enlarging the rating plate in the photo) so a rather hefty beast, however, my own gas fired Combi Boiler is a 42kW rated unit so nothing too unusually large.
That it should be costing so much in a modern house of that size does not surprise me at all. Air Source Heat Pumps are basically crap.
Mirror article https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/man-horrified-faces-7000-energy-28777485
The 16 kW rating is output, not electrical input. Divide the 16 by the efficiency to get input power.
Go on then, tell me what the input power of this particular heat pump actually is at say 2 degrees below freezing, all the details appear on the link I quoted.
Have a look at the project that has been running a while to evaluate heat pumps in typical houses. So far ecstatic reviews, but the installation was free. I requested before and after heating costs but not available, due next year.
https://es.catapult.org.uk/project/electrification-of-heat-demonstration/
A bit more on the project here:
https://www.current-news.co.uk/news/new-report-calls-for-sector-innovation-to-facilitate-mass-rollout-of-heat-pumps
The ‘Electrification of Heat’ Demonstration Project has found disruption to households during heat pump installation to be the main barrier to a mass rollout in the UK, and has called for sector innovation to facilitate a solution.
…
The Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project is providing crucial insights to help industry better understand how to scale-up heat pump adoption across Britain to meet the government’s ambitious target of 600,000 installations per year by 2028” said Guy Newey, CEO at Energy Systems Catapult.
“To reach the target, we will need to innovate to make switching to a heat pump as smooth a journey as possible for consumers; to drive down the costs of installation; and to provide a much better consumer-heating experience.”
That does seem to be a bit fundamental…
“disruption to households during heat pump installation ” – Can anyone find anything on the local grid upgrades needed for this project?
As this is clearly an overlooked problem (till it is unavoidable) if we look at the ongoing December 2022 Sheffield gas supply outage (a burst water main followed gas mains).
“Local electricity network operator Northern Powergrid warned local residents to only use portable electric heaters in occupied rooms and only while residents were at home, in order to reduce strain on the local power supply caused by increased usage of electric heating. Despite this however, residents on some streets in Stannington began to report intermittent power outages throughout the day.[2] Electric car owners were advised to use public charging points rather than those at their own homes.”
(oh electric car charging & fears of overloaded distribution networks)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Sheffield_gas_supply_outage#:~:text=The%20affected%20water%20main%20was,the%20Stannington%20and%20Hillsborough%20areas.
Even the the guardian reference the overloaded local electricity distribution network –
“After Cadent [Local gas distributor] gave out thousands of electric heaters, residents were told to stop using them as they were overloading the electric grid. “They’re telling us not to use the heaters because they’re beaching the grid,” says Walker.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/dec/07/sheffield-residents-face-fifth-day-without-heat-after-gas-mains-flooded
No installation costs and no running costs, without this information the exercise is a waste of time, I will have another go at them in the new year for some figures.
The other point is that the installation was FREE and yet 47% did not go ahead due to the inconvenience of installation.
Having notice some of the new products advertised in local media it appears they are encouraging the less well off to give up on the concept of making rooms in a house/flat ‘toastie’.
It appears they want people to buy electric blankets, slippers, onesies or even underpants. OK, I may of made some of that up.
Heating a house, a room, a water boiler or even using an oven regularly appears to something of an aspiration this winter. That’s after government subsidies. Pity those working from home these days.
Anyone who simply does the correct calculations and then asks how can the air be my best heating source when the ambient is below freezing. Yes there is a possibility with massive quantities of electricity and guess what is used to make that electricity – GAS. It makes you question the intelligence of MPs – again.
Look at what passes for “guidance” on this Dimplex brochure page.
https://www.dimplex.co.uk/professional/heat-pumps/air-source-heat-pumps
They quote “Nominal Rating at A10/W35” Sounds really technical eh? Until that is you realise that is A10 = outside air temperature of 10°C and W35 = internal water temperature of just 35°C. How deceitful is this when the actual EN14511 testing standard was set at 7°C outside air temp! So if it’s not cold outside you can get lukewarm water inside.
Rule number 1 – Never do anything the government recommends especially if they bribe you with taxpayers money. It will end up costing you dearly.
But it is saving the planet!!!!!!!
…………….. but, but.. we are being told that using more electricity is good for the environment.
reply: “Exactly.. when you have to shut down your home and can’t drive your car… that’s good for the environment”
What do we do about this madness? Bombard mps, msps, etc with validated figures , presented as simply as possible. Also msm but don’t bother withe Grauniad. If we don’t then we are finished. Some on this site seem pretty clued up. Get them contributing Paul.
How hard would it be to go after misleading advertising I believe gas central heating systems at least in Southern England are sized for at least as low as -2ºc so why are heat pumps allowed to advertise a COP based temperature well above 0ºc. (I think it 10ºc) which hides the problem that many heat pumps have with icing up & need resistive deicers – but as some heat pump are better than other I think manufacturer of the better products would support this.
on this I wonder what happened with Co2 heat pumps https://www.esru.strath.ac.uk/EandE/Web_sites/10-11/ASHP_CO2/ccl-potential.html
Also what about Consumer Protection Act 1987?
One of the first things we need to do is get rid of this mindset:
“… can be run on renewably generated electricity, making them carbon neutral.”.
Prize to the first person who can tell me something that cannot “be run on renewably generated electricity”, at least theoretically!
Heat Pump systems require that the installing technician know a great deal about them, else performance will suffer greatly. A couple of items to note.
When the HP goes into defrost mode, it brings on some 10 kW of electric heat to temper the indoor air whilst they system is running in “aircon” mode to de-ice the outdoor coils. If the defrost is a time/temp sort, and not a demand sort, then an onboard jumper determines the frequency of defrost. It can be set to 30, 60, or 90 minutes of runtime below an outdoor coil temp of -4 c. If the cycle timer is set too short, excessive cycling occurs causing excess costs. Or the defrost control board can be bad. same result.
There are 2 expansion valves in a HP system. The indoor TXV controls cooling mode discharge temperature. The outdoor TXV controls, effectively, the heating mode discharge gas temperature. Technicians “believe” the outdoor TXV is properly set at the factory so they don’t check it. This is often not the case. If the outdoor air temp is about 0 -4 C, then the gas discharge temp ought to be about 48 to 50 C. If it isn’t, the outdoor TXV can be adjusted if it is an adjustable type, by removing the conical nut on the end of the TXV and turning it clockwise to raise the gas discharge temp. Increments of 1/2 turn are advised, as is an indelible marker reference on the shaft and body prior to moving anything. If the discharge temp is too low, the indoor electric heat ( 10 kW +) will energize to supplement the low output of the HP in heat mode, causing unwarranted costs.
I’m not saying this poor fellow has these issues, but if he does, they can easily cause excessive costs of 50%. Both issues happened to me, so this is my experience.
PS: I had 2 “bad” defrost control boards, one improperly placed defrost termination thermostat, and one improperly set outdoor TXV. This is on 2 independent HP units. The installing technician denied there were any problems. I had to sort this out myself. About GBP 150 in parts and an hour of time. Dropped my heating costs about GBP 100/month on a total HP capacity of 4 kW. Things cost less when they work properly.
Hasn’t the Heat Pump Association, or whatever it might be called, said it only takes a week to train someone to install a pump and they will be ready to install 600,000 a year from 2028.
What could possibly go wrong?
Its very simple. An Air heat pump doesnt give a great deal of energy. Thus for them to be sufficient you need a highly insulated house. Without the high efficiency and insulated house you have a problem.
Much of the UK are old badly insulated houses. Germany, thanks to the RAF destroying most of their old houses have a much more modern and efficient housing stock.
To go green the UK needs to demolish most of its houses and rebuild as hyper-insulated apartment blocks. Grenfield is the answer!
“But my wife and I are struggling to see how the installation and running costs of the system makes economic and functional sense.”
FFS. WHY would you expect them to make “economic and functional sense?”
Due diligence, my friends.
The price of modern living shows no sign of easing. Today we are hearing reports that there may well be fuel price increases this coming March.
“Rishi Sunak refuses to rule out 12p hike in fuel duty that would hammer drivers in the spring” https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11558899/amp/Rishi-Sunak-refuses-rule-12p-hike-fuel-duty-hammer-drivers-spring.html
Does anyone know why people would install Air to Water Heat Pump in the first place when there is a efficiency penalty as air to air mini splits would make more sense as you could keep the output temperature just over 37ºc+ (lower you would notice the wind chill effect) so have as high COP as possible and they cheaper to install? As the only reason I can see is subsidy chasing as I don’t believe the RHI covers air to air mini splits.
I suspect that the heat pump switched to good old-fashioned resistance heating during the cold spell, they don’t work at very low outside air temperature, too low to evaporate the coolant.
perhaps we can have another mis selling scandal like the payment protection one, only this time it is the green lobby that gets sued.
Seriously though how the hell did he get conned into this without doing some research.
There are significant numbers of naïve people who think the government has their best interests at heart.
There are significant numbers of naïve people who, after getting burned by taking government advice, think the government has their best interests at heart. I betcha Mr Mason still thinks his government loves him. He is the government’s battered wife.
In Scotland there are a number of companies working in the islands ripping them out and putting back kerosene boilers. Everything from insulation to system design are critical to even getting near to really cost effective efficiency. New build maybe but for the rest forget it.
In December 2020 a 2 year old boy was killed by mould. The shocking pictures of this mould were shown on TV and the problem was just as bad for all the neighbours. This was in the town of Rochdale, but I bet this is repeated all over the country. I could not see any wall vents or ventilation in any of the TV coverage.
When I had a problem with a small amount of mould in one bedroom an expert advised that we kept the bathroom window open for an hour or two each day and we haven’t had mould for 40 years.
I keep reading that the Heat Pump needs a well insulated house. Can moderately priced houses, or a Council flat, be HP heated AND ventilated?
They can be heated and ventilated but each requires a substantial budget
Better to be battered than ignored apparently.
Heat pumps also have a dehumidifier mode. So I’ve read anyhow.
There is a widespread belief that UK homes are the poorest insulated in the EU. If that is the case, why do Italians use more energy to heat their homes?
If you look at this site you will see we are way down the league table for energy use in the home.
https://www.odyssee-mure.eu/publications/efficiency-by-sector/households/energy-consumption-by-end-use.html
It may be a “widespread belief”, but it certainly is not true!
It does not look to be true going by the energy consumption for heating across EU countries ! However some vested interest has done a survey of 80,000 homes and supposedly found UK houses lost temperature fastest after the heating was turned off. So this is what gets quoted by them all. I am sure it is a biased study.
The most recent data I can find for UK insulation dates from 2013:
“16.2 million homes had loft insulation of at least 125mm (68 per cent of homes with lofts). Of the 7.4 million homes with lofts without at least 125mm of insulation, only around 1 per cent are estimated to have no loft insulation.
13.4 million homes had cavity wall insulation (70 per cent of homes with cavity walls).
Of the 5.3 million homes without cavity wall insulation, most are hard to treat, with only 0.7 million of them being easy to treat standard cavities.
209,000 homes had solid wall insulation (3 per cent of homes with solid walls)”
Click to access statistical_release_estimates_home_insulation_levels_gb_july_13.pdf
I don’t think most people realise the extent of insulation required to make heat pumps a reasonably economic option. The “C” rating is not good enough, it needs to be “A”. Otherwise your heating bills will go up. It needs to be “A” rating just to keep your cost the same as gas in a lower rated property.
“If that is the case, why do Italians use more energy to heat their homes?”
Colder weather?
Reblogged this on Climate Collections.
Some friends of mine have had a 12kW (input) ASHP installed to replace a gas boiler, along with some PV panels. It’s a detached 1950’s bungalow, and they have done a fair bit of insulation work too. The summer was of course fine, but the last few weeks have seen them keeping the heating turned off, as they can’t afford the £25 a day it costs to run, so they shiver and wear their coats indoors. They are Green Party members, and rather angry about the outcome of their considerable expenditure. I have found it hard not to laugh. My own estimate of the likely cost of an ASHP (replacing gas) for my house shows a doubling of the annual heating bill. No thanks.
Pardon, what is ASHP?
Air Source Heat Pump
My local council forced me to install two heat pump systems in my duplex rebuild as part of environmental mandates. Can’t say if they saved me much money but because they are more complex than standard heating systems, they both failed after about 5 years, conveniently out of warranty. I’ve since replaced them with standard heaters again, which are more robust and I expect will last me 10-15 years.
And CO2 doesn’t affect the weather.
The article in the Mirror with the photos shows at least one problem that poor chap has. The heat pump is sited in a narrow alley between the house and a quite tall beech hedge. It really should be somewhere much more exposed so that the air from which the pump extracts heat is being naturally replenished by the wind. Where he has it in the coldest (and calmest) weather, it will create a cold ‘pool’, with a resultant drop in C.O.P.. The installers are at fault, unless he stipulated where it was to go for aesthetic reasons.
I’ve been wondering, in a densely built up area where everyone has an ASHP. Cold winter night with no wind, like we had until a few days ago. Cold air sinks, so if everyone has their ASHP turned up to max, will there be an even colder layer of air at low level? Will it turn into a “cold pool” over the whole area?
Well, the buildings leak heat all the time, and some of that is radiated, some of it lost through ventilation, so a portion of the heat will be returned to the local environment. I have no idea what the overall effect would be or if it would be measurable. My main worry is about local effects e.g. in small fenced/walled gardens like I have. The only place I have where I could put a heat pump (terraced house) is our small walled back garden. I’d be sucking heat out of the air in the enclosed garden, then losing it from the entire envelope of the house. Less of an issue on windier days of course, but the coldest are usually the calmest. Some keen gardeners might get a nasty surprise when their half-hardy plants get frozen by their ‘green’ heat pumps. There’s no way I’d ever fit one. It would crucify us financially (small pension).