I seen a press release about "Heat Pump offer" for lower tariff for heat pumps?

It’s 15p per kWh for OVOs new installation offer with Heat Geeks. They measure the electricity used for just the heat pump and that’s what’s charged at the 15p rate. Not available for existing installations but here’s hoping!!

The 15p deal is called Heat Pump Plus

Hi,

How long will the 15p tariff be available for ?

I heard that it will be for 12 months

Thanks

Paul;

OvO are very coy about this scheme and .. is it actually up and running yet?

I also am looking for a Heat Pump variable tariff since I am installing a big one in March, NOT via Heat Geek. If you have been looking for a government grant then you will know that certainly here (Scotland) they insist on MCS accreditation for the design and installation. I have it on good authority that Heat Geek do not install heat pumps, rather they have MCS accreditation but then certify installers themselves to do the work. On that basis your installer may or may not have MCS accreditation and in the latter case then if the funding body is awake they could reject your application.

I have to say that I object to the scheme because there is no functional connection between installation and electricity provision and it looks to me like a way of getting non-MCS accredited installers past the funding guidelines and squeezing out legitimate and more experienced firms. It is just a cosy business arrangement between Heat Geek and OvO and a land grab of government funds.

Unless OvO come up with something less objectionable and more generally available then I’m moving to another supplier and taking my company with me.

If you lived in the Bristol area you’d absolutely be able to contact an MCS accredited HeatGeek who can install you a heat pump with the government BUS grant. I don’t know how far the scheme extends right now but it has to start somewhere. OVO are based in Bristol, this may be the reason. 
Heat Geek provide training for heating engineers, they show who has passed which level of training on their map at https://www.heatgeek.com/find-a-heat-geek/ True, there aren’t any Elite level installers in Scotland.

Although MCS accreditation is required for the BUS scheme it doesn’t necessarily mean the installer has done the high level of training required to get to HeatGeek Elite.

Very happy to talk about my up-and-coming installation if this is the best forum… I have a generous 4 bedroom house (1975-1990), all on one level so lots of floor and roof. I’m off grid for gas and I’m burning 4000 litres of oil/annum (=over 10 tonnes of CO2) in a big 20 year old boiler. One heat pump will struggle on the coldest days so I’m going for a hybrid - a 14 KW Vaillant ASHP and a much smaller condensing oil boiler as a top-up - I’m hopeful that that will just be for a couple of weeks each year.  I’m replacing some of my radiators (P+ and K2 for the cognoscenti) with K3 which have three panels with fins. The rads I have chosen have the same height, width and pipe position as the current ones so I’m hopeful that they will go in one-for-one, just thicker - we’ll know about that next week when they’re installed.

Despite all of the discussion about heat pumps I feel that I am path-finding with this setup but there must be lots of heat-inefficient large rural properties for which this would be an option. 

I keep learning things which make me realise the magnitude of the problems with switching to sustainable power, e.g.: “A Tesla Powerwall will store as much energy as 1.3 litres of kerosene”.

Are you having any of the pipe work increased to 28 and 22 mm ? 

Sorry, me again but you mentioned batteries - were you thinking about photovoltaic input? A 12-panel Maxeon 3 solar array generates a bit over 5 kW under ideal conditions. Scotland is far from ideal so best take 80% of that when the sun shines - in December we average 27 hours of direct sun over the entire month (42 in January) so all of December equates to 111 kWh which is 3.6 kWh or a bit over £1 worth of electric power per day. I’ve tried to make PV work but there’s just not enough sun for heating or cars - it would take 5.5 days to half-charge a small 40 kWh EV. You get some PV output under bright cloud but it drops off a lot.

Where batteries or more likely a generator might be handy in a hybrid system is that if you had a power cut (and we do get them here) or the ASHP failed you could power the oil boiler and pump for a while till things came back on again.

To juliamc:

No-one has mentioned pipes though it had occurred to me: the main pipe runs are 22mm dropping to 15mm at each end of the radiators. The installer engineer is due here tomorrow, I’ll check though, thanks. I hope to have a full schematic for the system soon after that as well.

Concerning Octopus Agile I think the main requirement is for networking round the house and one of the more recent SMETS2 smart meters - one reason I’ve been holding off on OvO installing theirs. 

I take your points about accreditation and there, the funding bodies and private customers can easily check and insist on that. I’m a bit more concerned about the  OvO/Heat Geek partnership using OvO’s dominant market position to leverage Heat Geek’s position as installer-brokers. It is dangerously close to being a restrictive practice.

I’ve not researched tariffs further than Octopus - I’m not expecting to save money (it may even cost me) but this is me doing my bit to save the planet.  It may make this house more saleable, but that’s hopefully a LONG way into the future. Of course if we’re all using hydrogen or glowing zero-point modules by then I’m doomed ...