Heat pumps ‘too noisy’ for millions of British homes, Government told
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Oh dear!!
Heat pumps are too loud to be installed in millions of homes under the Government’s noise guidelines, ministers have been told.
The Government wants to install 600,000 heat pumps a year by 2028 to hit net zero targets, but a report by sound specialists warns uptake could be limited.
The study reveals that most heat pumps are too loud for many homes in built-up areas, such as terraced houses and flats, because they would break noise limits set for homeowners who want to install one without planning permission and with a government grant.
Local authorities are also braced for a rise in noise complaints as more of the green appliances are installed in urban areas, the report seen by The Telegraph reveals.
The findings, which were produced by a group of noise experts, have been sent to the Government to contribute to a review into heat pump noise being run by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Desnz).
Air source heat pumps, which are positioned outside a home, can produce a low constant hum of between 40 and 60 decibels which is similar to the level of noise made by a fridge or dishwasher. They will typically run continuously throughout winter…..
In order to qualify for the government grant, heat pump installations must comply with regulations set out by the Microgeneration Certification Scheme (MCS) – including a minimum level of noise disturbance to neighbours. It means a heat pump must not generate a noise louder than 42 decibels within one metre of a neighbour’s door or window.
Yet the report, which was presented to the Institute of Acoustics at a conference, found that of the top heat pumps from the five main manufacturers, not one device would meet MCS standards on noise unless the unit was at least 4m away.
Peter Rogers, of Sustainable Acoustics, said all terraces, flats and tenement buildings – equivalent to 47pc of Britain’s housing stock – would struggle to install a heat pump under MCS guidelines. He also said some installations in semi-detached homes, which account for 31pc of homes in Britain, could breach guidelines.
To meet noise regulations and receive grant funding, some homeowners would have to build a sound barrier – potentially at a cost of up to £5,000 – said Jack Harvie-Clark, of Apex Acoustics. But even if sound-proofing was installed, it may not be enough to reduce the noise to an acceptable level.
Alternatively, they could opt for a costly split system, where part of the heat pump is built inside the house.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/net-zero/heat-pumps-noisy-millions-british-homes/
What’s the betting that the government won’t just relax the MCS standards?
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Oh dear indeed!😂
Yes Oh dear, I AM having a great day, what with the “Sir”David news and all that.
So none of these “great guys” (sarc) have been on holiday abroad where other tourists go, and suffered the noise of AirCON units ? and then multiply it up against highly reflective walls … Bad enough in the heat of summer, but the cold of winter ?
…and in the black outs, “Silent night, whole long night, All is calm, all is white, Round yon can,dle, Mother and Child, frozen gullible so tender and mild, Frozen in submissible peace, ……
Good king Wenceslas was kept awake on coldest night of year.
‘Cause there was a terrible din, it was all that he could hear.
Loudly hummed the pump at night, though the house was cold.
He didn’t want the crap, a dud he had been sold.
There are far too many blatantly obvious drawbacks to Air Source heat pumps for any rational politician to endorse their widespread use let alone actually subsidise them.
From the Energy Saving Trust’s website
“As it gets colder outside, this noise will increase while it’s operating, but should still allow you to hold a conversation easily, only raising your voice a little.”
So do we really want a noise level where people have to raise their voice for conversation outside our bedroom window at 3:00 a.m.?
https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/air-source-heat-pumps/
As an aside, the same Trust emphatically states that you should NOT run your heating when your home is unoccupied – oh dear shame about the Heat Pump.
Nothing quite like coming back to a cold home to transport us back half a century.
Not to mention frozen pipes.
But you’ll only be allowed one flight every three years, anyway. Must be in Summer?
Unsure if that means a week in the Costa Lotta every six years.
More Genius notions from the Department of Zero Energy Security.
“only raising your voice a little”
I can’t help imagining Jeremy Clarkson saying that.
This may interest you GC, every medical professional, caterer, hotelier, heating engineer and a lot of other professionals know that you have to heat stored water to over 60°C to kill Legionella. But the heat pump guys know better ‘cos they say
“It has been shown that heating once a day or once a week to a higher temperature (of 60 or even 70 °C) is
increasing the risk for Legionella rather than decreasing it. Such weekly disinfection schemes should therefore
be abandoned.”
Click to access hpt-an46-03-task-1-legionella-and-heat-pumps-1.pdf
The IEA endorsed it so it must be true!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Green is good” or should that read “Green is God”?
The surprising thing of interest to me, Ray, after some updating my knowledge of legionella on duh web, is that the scientific view has changed. Back in the day, highly oxygenated water was the concern. Now, as you discuss, warm temperature is the concern.
“… you should NOT run your heating when your home is unoccupied ”
Say what? Heat pumps are as safe or safer than any other home heating solution. I have the ideal situation (house, site, inexpensive electricity, etc.) for a heat pump. After 15 or so years, it turns on and off as I desire it to do whether I’m home or not.
It has nothing to do with the safety aspect. The Energy Saving Trust’s function is to advise on saving energy. If you heat your home when you are say at work, you are continually losing heat that you are continually replacing. i.e. an external wall to a room at 21°C when it’s -1°C outside loses much more heat than one where it has cooled down with no heating.
It is one of the reasons that heat pumps were ranked as “poor” on domestic Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings in the UK.
Here electricity is over 4 times the price of gas per kWh.
I guess you have to balance heating your home from a much colder start by not having the heating on whilst you’re out (at work), and keeping it at a moderate temperature whilst you’re out and needing minimum top-up when at home. All the fabric of your home is a heat store, so it’s not just the air that you need to reheat.
We heat our (fairly modern build so pretty well insulated) village hall like this on a continual basis, so it never get’s ‘cold’, only less-warm, which means it doesn’t take very much to heat it for an event.
If you heat your home when you are say at work, it’s not uncomfortable when you get home. Screw the physics.
“… To meet noise regulations and receive grant funding, some homeowners would have to build a sound barrier …”
That sound barrier is not just a simple enclosure. It has to enable sufficient air to reach the HP and be expelled agin, whilst simultaneously attenuating the noise.
A HP’s COP is proportional to the airflow it receives and discharges.
Sound barrier? I thought you were going to say for the house 🙂 🙂 🙂
Sure.y it is a Mach 1 device?
I didn’t think that they were that noisy but as to running costs, I have some friends who changed from oil heating to a heat pump and theirs costs are up by a factor of three at least. An old thatched house too but they were apparently advised that it would be suitable.
Back when oil had reached about $120 a barrel, a journalist wrote how they were pushing heat pumps as a cheaper alternative to heating oil. His neighbours went for it while he held off. And then oil prices dropped as OPEC and Russia flooded the market with supplies. His decision was paying off as heating oil cost halved. His neighbours however, were just staring in disbelief at their now massive electricity bills.
ANY continuous noise like this is unacceptable. People living near any industrial fan noise know only too well how tiresome this can be. People must understand that human hearing is log law. That’s why some people can hear a pin drop!
They’ll relax the noise rules. They don’t care if we have to put up with a constant hum all night.
I suspect also that soundproofing against this kind of low-frequency hum is almost impossible. It will carry through the ground and through the structure of your house.
Most likely as they have increased the permitted noise level for windmills in Germany to allow more to be built.
Many have noted that there is a mystery hum in the middle of the night in some localities. This predates heat pumps BTW.
It’s never been settled what is the source of this hum. Well now they’ve got a ready made source which will cover up whatever else they are up to !!
Correct, it’s the LF vibrations that cause the most nuisance
Let’s not forget the alternative – death by drowning, heat stress, starvation, malaria and the myriad other imminent disasters. Surely accepting a few decibels is worth it to avoid all that.
Except we know that the British installing heat pumps can make no detectable difference to the global climate. So we are going to get all that, PLUS a hum all night.
Nor will heat pumps get you to Net Zero. The nation will switch, then the government will say you can’t use them, either.
Heat pumps might reduce your CO2 emissions, but they can’t eliminate them. They are a half-measure.
More likely they’re a non-measure.
I know not to do irony on American websites but I thought I’d be okay here.
I know you were being ironic. I too used to hope a UK site would have a more enlightened sense of humour than the US ones, but not always I’m afraid.
You missed the “sarc” tag
Why is that the alternative? Even if Britain shut down completely and we all perished it wouldn’t make the slightest difference to the climate – we contribute less than 1% to global CO2 emissions. So all this heat pump nonsense is just useless virtue signalling
Check out the history of the weather worldwide. It’s full of extreme weather events. There’s nothing new to see here.
Check out my “irony” posting above.
Poe’s Law
Hi Paul
Has something changed on your regular Emails? Starting with the Oct 23 weekly Email (oddly I never received one for Oct 16), when I click on “continue reading” on my Windows 11 laptop I get an “Unable to open https://……” response. Your older Emails still work OK, and the links open fine on my Android phone and tablet. My system hasn’t changed, has yours?
On my PC I now get all the previous topics on one giant page when I click on the link in my email. To get the individual topic I want to see from my email prompt of a new topic, I have to click that topic title listed on the right hand side list. Maybe your phone sees so much info it goes over your download limit? I don’t know why this has changed ……?? Admin please…?
When I Iived in France, I replaced oil with a heat pump serving underfloor heating. It halved my heating costs, but only compared to high price oil – gas not available.
It worked fine but it was of an appropriate size – big – (and cost), not the Toytown miniature useless units being proposed here.
The unit was outside in a large garden of my house in a hamlet in the country.
My neighbours had a small unit to heat their swimming pool.
They are audible and require distance and thick hedges, in my case, not to be a nuisance.
An estate or row of terraced houses all with heat pumps would be like living next to a continuously busy dual carriageway – particularly on cold nights.
Anyway – the generating capacity and grid infrastructure won’t cope with masses of heat pumps. And night time rates are lower because of lower demand, but as/if more heat pumps are installed, Winter nights will become high demand. Then what?
Like BEVs it’s another fantasy by a political class who think like two year olds.
Just been to a meeting of our local airport group, and was heartened to hear the chair say that the weather in the UK was so awful, everyone deserves to fly away on holiday. Then at the same meeting, chatting to the chair of a local council, who was adamant that globul warming was very real and all houses will be fitted with solar panels, and gas switched off by 2035 or whatever date is proposed this week. (The chair explained that their house had solar fitted 20 years ago). Where do we get the rare earths from I asked? Lithium can be extracted from aquifers here in the UK I was told. A new one on me but willing to learn how the trick is done.
Well this is probably what he is referring to.
https://cornishlithium.com
Basically it is geothermal fracking and extracting lithium
I would not get too excited about it though as it is more than likely a subsidy farming project. Another company operates along similar lines https://imerysbritishlithium.com
Lithium deposits in the UK were first discovered 200 years ago. The issues are that firstly there probably isn’t very much, it is hard to extract and UK terms and conditions for workers are very high whilst in other countries with significant deposits the workers have neither.
This report may help
Click to access the-potential-for-lithium-in-the-uk-2022.pdf
Thanks Ray. Most helpful.
Lithium isn’t a “rare earth” element. The fact that your council chair thinks it is speaks volumes.
No, but it’s very unstable and makes battery cars mobile crematoriums
That might be true if there was any metallic lithium in the battery, but there isn’t.
The NHS will be inundated with people claiming Tinnitus (I have in my left ‘ear’). That will be interesting….
Not only that, imagine your whole street whirring away 24/7 – no sleep and driving you nuts through the day
I suffer from tinnitus, it’s with me all the time. I blame working in an environment with a lot of cooling fans, ovens, air conditioning and other electro-mechanical equipment for several decades. I don’t think I’d actually be able to hear a low level hum above my background noise.
A company I once worked for had all its offices rebuilt as modern and open-plan as possible. However, to make up for all of the echoes, they installed a “white noise” system. When I came home at night, I was effectively deaf for a couple of hours while my ears recovered. Oh yes – on top of this, they swapped all the desk phones for the ‘cricket’ cheeping type – with no directional component, so you couldn’t tell if your phone was ringing or another on the other side of the office!
The LF noise & vibrations are only one health issue – the fact heat pumps only provide Luke warm water allows legionnaires disease to develop in the pipework & water sprays – you are literally dooming yourself to ill health, cold and poverty from the sky high consumption costs
Hi energywise, I have a personal intense dislike (bordering on hatred) for the entire modern heat pump industry circus. I feel they are despicable liars. Now if you think I am putting that too strongly consider this statement
“It has been shown that heating once a day or once a week to a higher temperature (of 60 or even 70 °C) is increasing the risk for Legionella rather than decreasing it. Such weekly disinfection schemes should therefore be abandoned.”
Nope I have not just made that up. Page 16 of this report concerning “Myths about Legionella” –
Click to access hpt-an46-03-task-1-legionella-and-heat-pumps-1.pdf
These people make your average NAZI look well intentioned.
Gamecock, you’re taking the piss now!
Ray,
I complained some months ago to the Advertising Standards Agency regarding an advertisement in a national paper by a large energy company in which they claimed that their heat pumps (air) were “multiple times more efficient than a gas boiler”
I claimed this is impossible given that no device is 100% efficient, multiple must be at least twice (50% efficient) which is far below that of gas boilers.
They declined to take any action so I initiated a complaint about their decision. I’m still waiting to hear.
As I’ve noted before — My hot water comes from a completely separate tank (resistant heaters) and is not part of the heat pump.
Such are called “hot water” heaters, but of course they are cold water heaters.
So you pay to operate an heat pump just for tepid heating? And you pay additionally to use an immersion heater purely for hot tap water?
Heating a typical 120 litre HWS tank from say 12°C mains water temperature to a safe 60°C using a resistance heater takes about 7kWh which at the current UK rate of £0.282 per kWh works out at £2.00 ($2.50 US). Do that every day of the year here and you’ve just blown £730 for just 1 tank of hot water per day. Not a very popular choice.
Do you run your water heater when you are not at home?
Gamecock. I grew up without mains services, electricity, gas water and so on. Our hot water came from the “back boiler” of a Rayburn stove. There was/is no mains gas in the area so some of my friends had their hot water from what they called an “emersion heater”. I remember how this was used sparingly only when required.
Take away the subsidy, remove the coal & gas heater ban …and see if anyone wants a heat-pump
Thanks, I should’ve mentioned that I get that too.
If the noise stops suddenly your heat pump may have just been stolen.
Bit of a reverse alarm situation. It doesn’t go “off” when it’s “gone off” rather it stops “going on” when its gone “off” Apologies but I find it very hard to take the damn things seriously!
I have to disagree with this statement that heat pumps are “too noisy for millions of UK homes”.
The technology is now extremely refined by Japanese and Korean manufacturers where people live very close together and rely on these systems for cooling and heating every day. The noise regulations for them are extremely strict in the far east.
Outside air source heat pump units even at maximum load are below 50 decibels and are controlled to only run at maximum load for twenty minutes to protect the system. Most run at max around 43 to 46 decibels and once the space is up to temperature they run at around 25 to 30 decibels. You would need to look inside the outdoor unit to see if it is still operating, even if you are standing right next to it as natural background noise levels range from 30 to 70 decibels. All the indoor domestic units range from 10 to 23 decibels and at night you would not know the unit is running. By contrast an ordinary fan is 45 decibels.
I know this because my whole home has been climate controlled with these systems for more than ten years and I have the specification sheets and hundreds of peaceful nights to know what the facts are.
That said, I know too much about climate science to know that the whole CO2 thesis is massively over stated and there is no climate emergency.
I have heat pumps because they save me money on heating bills and my home is extremely comfortable within minutes at the touch of a remote control during the hottest and coldest of weathers. The technology is sound.
Those decibel ratings are likely for smaller units (and there’s all sort of shenanigans based on distance and power or pressure). Mitsubishi announced their new Ecodan R290 air source heat pumps just yesterday (13th November) for UK residential use (they’re made in Livingston) and have ratings of 56-58dBA based on BSEN12102. That’s more office noise level than library. Also, we all know how much louder machinery gets when bearings are worn. A lot of neighbourly disputes are likely to happen a few years into ownership rather than on initial install.
The technology is refined so the amount of “when heat pump tech gets popular it’ll be better” nonsense articles have been maddening. Of course there’ll be small incremental improvement but all the DESNZ and utility co sponsored articles give the impression the UK is magically going to do better than the Japanese have done for 70 years!
I do think that targeting/worrying about relatively minor issues that can be fixed (from noise levels to resource extraction) at small expense shouldn’t be given much weight when you have far larger issues. The hundreds-of-billions spent on intermittent power isn’t going to help if people actually buy EVs and heat pumps and there is no base-load to support it.
” I have heat pumps because they save me money on heating bills and my home is extremely comfortable within minutes at the touch of a remote control during the hottest and coldest of weathers. ”
You have heat pumps that can heat your house to “extremely comfortable” within minutes during the “coldest of weather” ?
Micky my post below was meant as a reply to David Woodcock. He must be talking about air to air systems not air to water heat pumps. Air to Air are quicker for individual rooms but I still however doubt the claim of “with minutes”
Hi Micky,
Yes, I do have air to air systems which are far more efficient than air to water which I do NOT recommend. However, my air to air systems work to produce heat or cooling within two minutes from start up and within five to ten minutes the room or rooms are either nice and cool or toasty warm.
I set my master bedroom system to come on at 5am in the winter and set the thermostat to 26C. At 05:15am the room is already at temperature and the system shuts down and I turn it off.
It costs me 7 pence in electricity for the 15 minutes and we leave the house at 05:45am. All systems stay off until the evening.
I can set the roving eye technology so that the systems follow me around the house switching on and off as I enter different rooms.
They also monitor my activity levels so that they turn the temperature up or down depending on my activity. All this technology is much cheaper than gas boilers and central heating and it saves 40% on the heating bills. The cooling is for free because I have solar.
” I set my master bedroom system to come on at 5am in the winter and set the thermostat to 26C. At 05:15am the room is already at temperature and the system shuts down and I turn it off. ”
What’s your starting temperature to reach 26C in 15 minutes ? How big is the room ?
Hi Micky, The room starting temp is typically circa 15C, the room floor area about 25m2 and this bedroom system is about 13Btu because there is an adjacent en-suite. So you see it just takes ten to fifteen minutes to raise the room temp to 26c. It really helps to get you out of bed too as it becomes too hot and we end up throwing the quilt off before the alarm at 05:15am 🙂
From switch on its about two minutes for the hot air to start which typically leaves the indoor unit fan coil at 65C.
Hi Micky, might I suggest David Woodcock is not quite what he may seem. He certainly is no engineer and I would suggest he has some skin in the game. See my responses to him
” this bedroom system is about 13Btu because there is an adjacent en-suite ”
13 Btu seems low.
What’s the balance point for your system?
” 13 Btu seems low. ”
My limited understanding is that a typical BTU rating for a double bedroom and ensuite would be in the thousands, not 13. Is my limited understanding wrong?
Hi David, would I be right in thinking you have an Air to Air heat pump system which is how you are describing a system that offers heating and cooling?
If so your comparisons are wrong. In the UK only Air to Water systems are offered grant subsidy and operate differently to the systems prevalent in Japan and the Far East.
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/air-source-heat-pump
Hello Ray,
Yes, I have air to air source heat pumps which are cheaper to install and much more efficient to heat with because you don’t need to heat a much more dense medium like water first and then pay extra to pump all the water around the house using a three horse power electric water pump.
Air to air systems do NOT “operate differently” to air to water systems as you suggest. Both types of system extract heat from the atmosphere using precisely the same principal and the same apparatus.
Further you are NOT correct in claiming that air to air source heat pumps are not subsidised in the UK. They are subsidised.
All domestic installations of air to air heat pumps (that is the equipment, the materials and all of the installation costs) are subsidised by 20% by the UK Government as they are deemed as renewable energy products and so the whole installation is VAT exempt and there is NO LIMIT! Unlike air to water where the subsidy is limited to a max of 7K and that only covers the cost of upgrading all your radiators!
Air to air systems also work within minutes to heat a room to temperature well before a radiator has had time to heat up and start a convection process going. As the information in the link you provided clearly states; this makes Air to air many times more efficient than air to water and also much cheaper to install.
David without wishing to sound impolite you are quite the master of silly wordplay. Firstly I said “grant subsidy” so I was correct. Secondly removal of a tax is not a subsidy to most rational people unless of course you feel only paying 5%VAT on energy is a subsidy.
Air to Air systems most certainly are functionally different in that the ΔT across the cold/hot sides is much lower.
You are not an engineer at all, you are working on the “gravy train” financial and insurance side aren’t you?
Well then we disagree because the Government has as part of it’s Green Incentives deducted all of the 20% VAT on the total cost of domestic air to air heat pump installations and a 20% discount is quite an incentive which you failed to mention.
p.s. What the hell is a ” a three horse power electric water pump.” on a central heating system. 3HP is 2.2kW otherwise known as one hell of a big pump.
Here is a typical central heating pump…it is 60W
https://www.screwfix.com/p/grundfos-ups3-15-50-65-domestic-heating-circulator-230v/503fh
Larf? I nearly bust a gut 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Slightly off topic, but I see the ‘I’ is going one better than ‘climate emergency ‘ as they report the first carbon capture plant in the US – which is going to help prevent a ‘Climate Catastrophe’!!!
Like everything climate related, the language has to get more and more scary. How long before we see Armageddon and Apocalypse?
“How long before we see Armageddon and Apocalypse?”
Well actually…..already have!
https://www.euronews.com/2023/09/15/climate-armageddon-scientists-observe-sea-temperatures-rise-in-uk
and
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending
There’s actually loads more on google news.
I think in future the media will start really personalising the issue such as “Climate Change will cause your bollocks to explode” or something suitably gory for all the other multitudinous sexes we now seem to have.
Further to my above reference to extreme genital effects associated with climate change I thought I had better just check it out. Guess what…..”Global warming and testis function: A challenging crosstalk in an equally challenging environmental scenario”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9885165/
Never a truer word said in jest!
Ray, there is NOTHING that can’t be blamed on climate crisis/collapse/emergency/armageddon/Apocalypse (choose your favourite adjective)
So….a member of the Bank of England interest rate setting committee has admitted what many of us suspected all along. Namely, Net Zero is causing inflation and economic stagnation. Not to mention all the taxpayers cash being wasted on stupid things like CCS and ruining our steel industry, that could give us tax cuts. True, that the money would likely be wasted on something else as opposed to cutting government spending.
I would forgo a tax cut for a couple of years for a comprehensive road repair programme.
My estimate of the cost to date of netzero is approx £700 billion. That would fix a lot of roads
It would certainly fund a massive tax cutting programme.
…. UK cost of netzero = approx £700 billion
Are ground-source heat pumps viable in the UK? We installed ours many years ago because it made economic sense, and we love it. Here in the USA Midwest, the temperature in the ground is 57F year-round. The outside air temperature does not affect performance at all, and everything outside the house is underground: five wells, each 180 feet deep. Zero noise. It provides all of our heating, cooling, and domestic hot water. Our electric bill is seldom more than $100. That’s with everything in the house being electric, including two refrigerators and a large freezer.
$100 per annum is a low electric bill
I suspect he means per month, which is the standard billing cycle in the USA But the average retail price is around 15¢/kWh in the USA, so that buys 8MWh in a year.
£80 per month? = £960 per annum. That’s not so cheap.
Before the recent price madness in the UK , it used to be possible to heat (GCH) and power a 4 bed detached house for a total of about £1000 per annum
I guess ground source will be quieter because no external fan. There is a pump however, which I assume is above ground.
Anyhow here in the UK ground source is more expensive and can’t be installed in many property types. In densely populated urban areas it is inevitable they will be limited to air-source.
The variable-speed pumps are in the main unit in the basement, so nothing outside except buried pipes. You are correct: it is more expensive (in our case about double the cost of a conventional heat pump), and it does require some real estate, although not much for a vertical system like ours. Just five holes drilled in the yard. I wonder how the ground temperature in the UK compares to ours. I believe it is always equal to the average air temperature. For us that’s 57F, which is ideal for a heat pump.
To answer your initial question, yes they are technically viable but very few domestic properties can meet the space requirements even for deep bores. UK building regulations stipulate bores should be at least 6 metres apart and 7 metres from any buildings. For a 10kW heating load you would likely need 3 bores of between 80 to 100 metres (not feet) deep. As well as the space you also need access for the heavy machinery to complete the work, favourable geology and often neighbour’s consent – most Brits get frightened by boring hence no fracking!
The UK (particularly England) has one of the world’s highest population densities and very few homes, even in more rural areas, can achieve meet the space requirements. As there is no mass market available for such work the costs rise astronomically for the few that could and hence puts them off.
For those with larger gardens, coils at 2 metres down over a large area are used but even this option is prohibitively expensive and only available to a small percentage.
At 2 metres down in the UK temperature varies between 8° to 12°C by season and location so not as favourable as your quoted 57°F/14°C. It has to be remembered that London is further north than any US state apart from Alaska.
Interesting, thank you. Horizontal fields are cheaper than vertical around here, and are accomplished with horizontal boring (they used to dig trenches with a trackhoe). But the installer said the area around our house was too rocky for that. The building sits on solid limestone. Cooling is where the system really shines, and I suppose there isn’t much need for that in the UK.
Hoist upon their own petard.
I read an article some months ago saying that the UK Government selected 4,500 homes in Newcastle-on-Tyne to consider installing heat pumps to replace gas boilers. Surveys were carried out with customers advised on the procedures necessary. Fitting would be free of charge. 13 homes agreed to comply.
Possible repeat
OFGEM have finally announced the ROC recycle premiun value for 2022-23 at £6.81 on top of the cashout price of £52.88, making a total of £59.69. There is a further 7p that could be added from late/non payments which were much smaller this year at £7.2m. Call it £60 per ROC in round numbers.
With the poor wind output over the summer and high levels of curtailment for Scottish ROC funded wind farms it is likely that the premium will be a similar percentage over the current inflation index boosted cashout price of £59.01 per ROC for the year from April 2023, taking the current ROC value to around £67.
That’s £234.50/MWh in subsidy for floaters Hywind and Kincardine, meaning they are getting about 4 times the market value of their output..
Link to OFGEM announcement.
https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/renewables-obligation-renewables-obligation-certificates-presented-and-redistribution-buy-out-fund-2022-23