When we looked at the total cost of ownership of heat pumps in the UK I was surprised by this finding: Heat pumps with only slightly above average efficiency already today reach cost parity with gas boilers after the government grant. More here👇 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... - ThreadSky

janrosenow.bsky.social • 29 days ago

When we looked at the total cost of ownership of heat pumps in the UK I was surprised by this finding:

Heat pumps with only slightly above average efficiency already today reach cost parity with gas boilers after the government grant.

More here👇

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004225000434

Comments

snecklifter.bsky.social•29 days ago

There is an important difference. Gas boilers typically run in the morning and evening only. ASHP need to run throughout the day to maintain temperature. Therefore, as I'm discovering, ASHP are cosier but more expensive.

l-bow.bsky.social•29 days ago

Cost doesn't need to increase if the COP is high enough to cancel out increase in delivered heat. There doesn't seem to be much understanding out there on how much more heat is used moving from intermittent to continuous heating.

robertosfield.bsky.social•28 days ago

Yes ASHP are far more cosy, but also much cheaper to run than Gas boilers.

I know from first hand experience - we replaced our Gas boiler with a Heat-pump last August. Also added solar and crucially a household battery and use EV tariffs.

A thread on our January costs:
https://bsky.app/profile/robertosfield.bsky.social/post/3lh54vdrhls2g

snecklifter.bsky.social•28 days ago

Yes, I have all of these technologies. I'm speaking from personal experience. Heat pumps cost more to run because they run much more often and electric is 4 times the price. Batteries and tariffs help to manage this though.

robertosfield.bsky.social•27 days ago

You are doing things seriously wrong if your setup is costing you more than a gas boiler.

The fact that heat-pumps run most of the time doesn't at all mean they cost more, they run at low power most of the time. It's total energy used that is controls costs.

Done right heat-pumps are 1/3rd cost.

snecklifter.bsky.social•27 days ago

My setup is one of the most efficient on https://heatpumpmonitor.org - you're ignoring the fact that high temp setups can do short bursts in morning and evening but low temp ASHP needs to run constantly throughout the day. The spark gap makes this more costly. Ignoring that fact isn't helpful.

robertosfield.bsky.social•27 days ago

Go check the facts I've presented for my own setup, it clearly refutes the statements that heat-pumps are more costly. My household energy bills are 1/3rd of what they were before we installed heat-pump and batteries.

If folks aren't seeing cost improvements then they are missing opportunities.

antonyrwalker.bsky.social•29 days ago

I expected the issue you're experiencing but it's not really materialised.I looked back at last year and our HP generated/transferred 6.4mwh heat to the house which is in the same ball park as the amount of gas we used in the years before (less really with gas inefficiency) but used only 1.8mwh ⚡

antonyrwalker.bsky.social•29 days ago

Feel we've really benefited from a smart tariff though I should add. Our 10mwh electric last year came at less than 13p/kwh

turbogiscard.bsky.social•29 days ago

Thanks you for the job Jan. Short comment on the graphs : for the future, please consider at least including somet marks along the axis to indicate unambiguously the values to the tick labels. I think it's important when the graphs aim at carrying some quantitative information to the reader.

born-to-re-wild.bsky.social•29 days ago

I read the paper yesterday. What wasn't clear to me was what the effect of Electricity prices dropping by 20% did you model that at all?

janrosenow.bsky.social•29 days ago

We used government price projections which indicate that both electricity will become cheaper over time.

born-to-re-wild.bsky.social•29 days ago

That's answered a slightly different question.

born-to-re-wild.bsky.social•29 days ago

I'm interested because @dalevince.com suggested today that if you decoupled the renewables wholesale price from the gas generated electricity price it could reduce household electricity bills by £250 per year. If you took the VAT off too then that's a considerable price drop

Comments

Posting Rules

Reply