Heat pumps - What’s your experience of the benefits and downsides to an ASHP?

So nice to see such a lively ASHP discussion happening here!

Hoping this has provided some helpful thinking points for you, @Gum168 and others who might be considering a heat pump purchase soon!

As for the Passivhaus dream, I wonder if @TerryE might have any more advice on making that dream a reality?

My experiences of a hybrid heat pump/ boiler system

Under two years ago I took up an offer for EDF pay for The £8000 installation of a hybrid heat pump system.

I just had to pay £100 and EDF now claim back the RHI from the government for the next 7 years after which the system reverts to my ownership.

Initially the heat pump's circulation pump wasn't installed correctly by a company called Passiv.

However, issue has now been resolved by Passiv and overall I am rather happy with the solution where the heat pump is on my estimate about 22 hours a day and the boiler only 2 hours at most.

Currently I am paying 5p per kilowatt for 4 hours a night and 16 pence per kilowatt for 20 hours and I also have a Tesla 13 kW power wall battery to spread low cost electricity to about midday.

I am monitoring the cost of both the heat pump usage and the overall electricity consumption of the house and the heat pump is costing approximately £2.90 a day to heat the main six rooms in the house 24/7 and more rooms at weekends with an additional £2 per day for all other electricity costs.

I live in a large six bedroom, five main living room detached house and I'm using netatmo radiator valves to control when individual rooms are heated and to what temperature.

One surprising benefit is that now that I have removed The thermostatic radiator valves from the two rooms which have wireless thermostat connected to the hybrid heat pump system, leaving the four main rooms heating to 19° from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. and heated to 21° from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. makes the house nice and comfortable all the time.

This is a far more enjoyable home environment In that I am having the main rooms heated to a near constant temperature 24/7 rather than wake up to a cold bedroom in the morning and then go down into a cold kitchen and cold living rooms and wait for the boiler to heat up the rooms over the next hour or two.

There is a slight water flow noise from the radiators obviously 24/7 but apart from that all seems very positive and I recommend others consider this option rather than except the fear uncertainty and doubt around post fossil fuel heating in the UK.

However, when my fixed rate deal ends in may, obviously I will have to pay higher electricity rates.

What I really want next however is to connect at least one of my electric cars, the Nissan Leaf is the obvious choice, to a vehicle to home bi-directional link to allow me to use The leafs 30 kW low overnight cost energy storage each day.

However, as I have mentioned before, as far as I can see, there is no vehicle to home or vehicle to grid hardware available in the UK at the moment and apparently no prospect of there ever being so!

It seems to me that the electricity suppliers such as OVO, octopus and alike are just promoting vehicle to grid trials for the past 4 years as PR exercise and not really have any intention to roll them out for general public use :-(

What are other people's impressions of current situation and the future?

We have a heat pump installed but Ovo still charge us the gas standing charge even though we paid them to remove our gas meter and cap the pipes, no one we have spoken to seem to understand that we no longer use gas only electric. It's a real disincentive to having a heat pump, we are trying to be green and do the right thing so this has really upset us as bills are so high as it is. Has anyone experienced similar?

@katiebelcher_ We had the gas meter removed last year by Octopus. It took a few days after removal for the meter to be taken off the national metering system, but the gas bill was amended to remove the standing charge from the day the meter was removed.

Is you gas meter number still showing in your OVO account?

Hi @Chip370 

I'm going to send the bat signal out to @James_N and @timtoos in the first instance as I think they have an Ecodan from memory.

I assume the water is heated via a hot water cylinder rather than any other means? When was the heat pump installed? Did you change the cylinder when the new system was put in? I assume you didn't have issues ith your previous heating system?

Hi,

Our system was a new installation in a new house so there was no previous system to remove. 

Yes, the ASHP heats the hot water in a cylinder.

Are you thinking of changing an existing system to use ASHP/GSHP?

Hope this helps.

Thanks

The government and many energy-aware bodies recommend a move to Heat Pump technology, especially in new-builds. It is generally accepted that the most efficient of these is the Ground Source Heat Pump. 
I have taken the recommended step and installed a GSHP in my new build. This was 12 years ago and I do not regret the decision. My GSHP ideally benefits from  3 periods of “reduced rate”  electricity supply, and this I obtained from the Economy 10 Tariff.

HOWEVER
Economy 10 availability seems to be reducing - with nothing replacing it to support the increasing demand from heat pump users. This is compounded by lack of Smart Meter availability for these users.

Does OVO have words of encouragement for those of us who seem to be doing the “right thing” but finding fewer suppliers able to supply our energy supply needs..

Hoping for some encouragement….

I

Hey @Old Timer,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community.

That’s amazing to hear you’ve had a heat pump installed.

Unfortunately, OVO currently only offer Economy 7 Tariffs. If you moved over with a smart meter as Economy 10, it would be automatically changed to Economy 7 times. The truth is the manufacturing of Economy 10 meters is becoming rarer. Hopefully the energy market comes up with similar schemes or incentives in future. I agree it’s beneficial for the planet to financially reward customers who are investing in green tech. 

Have you heard of OVO Power Move? OVO are rewarding customers for shifting their energy use to greener parts of the day! 

We have lots of interesting discussions on the Forum about heat pumps and your knowledge could really help other customers:

We also have similar threads relating to the issue you’ve raised:

Hope this helps. 

The general feeling is to get a return valve to the kitchen tap. Or turn the stop valve down so water doesn’t enter the house so fast

if I turn on the tap before the kitchen sink then the water heats faster , same if I turn the shower on before bathroom sink heats faster 

this is such a waste of water

thank you

There is no problem With the actually heat at the tap I just have to have it on at full

blast to get the hot water there and as it flows so fast it splashes everywhere 

Hi guys. 
I have a super insulated log house of about 110m2. It has underfloor heating, heated from a thermal store utilising an ASHP currently 7kw. I have 3.9kw of solar panels installed and look to store electricity in a battery.

Thinking of combining the thermal store and battery storage into one or maybe two, heat battery instead of the solar battery?

How do I size the heat battery necessary to supply sufficient heat to the floor?

Heat pump chimneys - never knew that was a thing...