Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP) - How have your energy usage and costs changed since getting one installed?

My husband and I built an energy efficient home a few years ago with air source heat pump, underfloor heating and excellent insulation. Our rural site has no gas and so we rely solely on electricity. Until last year we have had fairly low electricity bills. I, as with the rest of the population, was fully expecting my bills to increase, however not quite at the rate they have.

I would like my account to be investigated as my bill from 5th March 2022 – 29th May 2022 showed a total electricity charge of £1682.54!!!!!!! The charge for Dec-Mar was only £371, and that was the middle of winter. How is this possible?

An engineer recently came out to fit a Smart Meter and was astounded when I told him this.

Because of this charge we are now in debt and our monthly charges have gone from £200 per month to £461 per month. Although I understand on paper it looks as though we have used £1682.54 this can surely not be correct and I don’t see why I should have to pay this until it is investigated.

On checking my Direct Debit on ‘My Ovo’ this new amount of £461 has now been set and I am NOT able to change it to a lower amount. It infuriates me how energy companies and ‘set’ direct debit amounts IN ADVANCE. Myself and the rest of the population are not daft. OUR money sits in your account making YOU interest. I would love to see that figure!

Please advise how this can be sorted as myself and my husband are becoming increasingly stressed about the increasing cost of a debt we don’t believe is ours.

The old meter will have been sent for calibration checks.  So if it was in error you’ll get to know.

On the other hand, if the floor heating was left on so the heat pump didn’t have to do so much work then you’ll have used way more electricity.  I’m assuming that the readings on this bill were correct - no transposed digits or the like.  If the readings are correct and the meter isn’t out of calibration, then I think you owe the money.  Sorry.

Does your heat pump give you records of electricity use per month ? It would be useful to get that data to compare each months meter readings. I would imagine that would eliminate the heat pump as the culprit.

Hey @Coff4,

Sorry for the issues you’ve had.

On the large bill or bills, are there estimated reads? When your old meter was removed the engineer would have taken a photo of the final reading- this reading will also appear on the yellow or white sticker on your smart meter.

I’d check the readings are all correct. If your bills were estimated for a long time and then we took an actual read this could have caused a large ‘catch up’ bill. 

You can send screenshots of the statements for us to have a closer look, but please remove any personal details first.

Let’s get to the bottom of this!

I had a Mitsubishi Ecodan 8.5kwh pump and system fitted last week after living in the house with storage heaters for 10 years. 60kwh a day in winter is not unusual with storage heaters especially where I live, in the Highlands. So if this new system uses up to 60kwh in winter I will not be phased by it, but based on just one week’s usage I am blown away by how cheap it is compared to what I had before. The day before the installers came, with my five storage heaters, I used 40mwh off peak (I am on an Economy 10 tariff and the storage heaters used most of that 40kwh) and 3kwh Peak. The day after the installers left, with the new ASHP❤️ I used 7 kwh Off Peak and 8 kwh Peak. Of course, it is only May, and it is mild. I have the temperature set at 18.5, the water is 50, it’s on all the time, at the moment I am having the temperature at this level because I need to know how this thing is working and how much it is using, but there is a wrap around warmth in the house even though the radiators never get above tepid, and there is hot water whenever I want it. I have tried 19 degrees and it is sweltering hot….😁If in winter this system uses 3 or 4 times as much electrcity as now, I will still be quids in, and I might actually be warm for a change. The general drift online is that leaving this system on 24/7 at a fairly constant settting, moving the temperature up or down only by .5 or so, is the best way to go. It seems to me that folks who had gas central heating previously, have some difficulty adapting to this, and they expect the radiators to be blazing hot to the touch, and the heating to be on a timer . 

It all depends on what kind of system you had before. Here we do not have access to gas, I was losing sleep over the approaching end of my fixed tariff in September, and I am used to a ‘system’ where you have to have the heaters on all the time, but I am also used to them never adequately heating the house even with 60kwh a day usage. The Council and homeenergyscotland paid for this system, so it is a Godsend as far as I can see, HOWEVER as Ovo/SSE do not currently offer ANY incentive tariffs for heat pumps unless you happen to be in a few small areas, I shall be moving over to Octopus in September even though it will mean getting a smart meter, which I do not really want since there are so many bad reports about them not actually working.

Incidentally, I was left with practically zero information as to how this new system works or the settings, I wasn’t even asked whether I had a suitable router etc, and I certainly wasn’t shown how to change the settings, or how to set up the melCloud app or even that there is a wifi adapter or what it looks like -  and it seems to me that many people, like me, have to do the research for themselves on the internet. Fortunately there is a lot of stuff available especially on youtube.

That’s really good news @amanda1 , particularly the scheme that paid for it ! I also had an inefficient heating system and got my heat pump fitted on a government trial for free. I had the same experience with lack of instructions, in fact told not to touch anything. I didn’t take any notice of that. After much trial and error it’s now running constantly like yours, and very efficiently. Are you using weather compensation ? It does seem counterintuitive but it’s a fact, running it overnight stops the house cooling down and you can benefit from the e10 cheaper rate. I set mine down one degree at 9pm and back up at 5am. It rarely comes on at night except in very cold weather (min was -7 degrees south east England), but I’m on a single rate tariff. Great news, spread the word as there are a lot of people saying they don’t work and that’s obviously wrong !

@juliamc  thanks - i haven’t a clue if I am using weather compensation …..the joy of discovery awaits! I also was told there was no need to touch anything! I have a neighbour in exactly the same kind of house who has had the same installation (except that she got solar panels and battery) on an Eco10 tariff. She advised me that the antifreeze temperature setting (ie when the antifreeze mechanism kicks in) needed to be set to 0, because in Tomintoul which is where I live, the temperature in Winter is almost always below 5 degrees between December and January , and we frequently have six inches of snow lying for several days at a time. When she had her pump fitted late last year, the antifreeze mechanism was running all the time and costing a fortune, hundreds of pounds a week. But when she had this setting adjusted to 0 degrees, her bills went down to about £40 a week. My installers, the same ones as she had, have set this setting to 0 on mine. But until October I won’t know how much the ASHP really costs to run. I am just assuming that it can’t possibly cost more than my storage heaters would have cost! Also none of us has any idea how much energy tariffs will be in September which is when my fixed tariff ends, so I have had to guestimate the price it will cost per kwh, but I have estimated high, at 50p per kwh peak rate, 40 per kwh off peak, and 55 Kwh usage a day, and it is still coming out cheaper than the storage heaters would have been. Apart from cost to run, the main difference is that now if I sell the house it will have an EPC above an E….

It’s a bit insulting to be told not to touch the controls isn’t it! I wonder if it’s a misogynist’s thing ?

@juliamc  Maybe ! It’s more likely that it is an attempt to avoid having to come back when you’ve messed up their lovely settings.  

I've also got an Ecodan heat pump and have played around with the settings quite a lot. If you want to chat about what you can, and can't, change let me know. I haven't broken anything yet 😆