Scaling the roll out of heat pumps across Great Britain is set to require cross-sector innovation to overcome the challenges to adoption, according to the new findings from the ‘Electrification of Heat’ Demonstration Project.
Funded by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), the Demonstration Project is working to understand the technical and practical feasibility, and constraints of a mass roll out of heat pumps into British homes. The lessons from this project are expected to help to inform the approach taken by industry to meet government aims of installing 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028.
The project aimed to install up to 750 heat pumps, with Warmworks, E.ON, and OVO Energy, appointed as the delivery contractors in the South East of Scotland, North East of England, and the South East of England respectively. It received 8,807 expressions of interest from households who cited sustainability and low carbon heating and interest in new technology as the most common reasons for wanting to participate. In total, the Project installed 742 heat pumps into a broad spectrum of housing types, to reflect a representative sample of households in Great Britain.
Heat pumps were found to be widely suitable across a broad spectrum of housing types and the project demonstrated that energy efficiency upgrades are not always necessary to install a heat pump. For instance, energy efficiency upgrades were only made for 15% of properties where a heat pump was installed – in most cases this was loft insulation. The majority of homes where a heat pump was installed had an Energy Performance Certificate rating of C or D, according to business representatives.
The main barrier reported by participants to progressing to a heat pump installation was the disruption of having the heat pump installed. This was reported by 47% of participants who decided not to proceed with a heat pump installation.
Guy Newey, CEO at Energy Systems Catapult, said: “The Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project is providing crucial insights to help industry better understand how to scale-up heat pump adoption across Britain to meet the government’s ambitious target of 600,000 installations per year by 2028.
“To reach the target, we will need to innovate to make switching to a heat pump as smooth a journey as possible for consumers; to drive down the costs of installation; and to provide a much better consumer-heating experience.”
Alex Thwaites, head of zero carbon living at OVO Energy, added: “We’re committed to helping our customers decarbonise their homes through practical and innovative solutions. This trial helped us to accelerate the way we heat our homes, removing our reliance on gas and paving the way to a zero carbon future.
“Now more than ever, we need to collaborate as an industry to find sustainable ways to heat households across the UK.”