The UK is Europe's heat pump laggard.

What went wrong? How can the UK turn from laggard to leader?

A thread.

4/ Since April the UK has a new heat pump grant scheme called the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS). It provides £5-6k grants for a heat pump install.

But the scheme is behind target of 30,000 units installed per year.

https://t.co/Z4Qv6Rv8jB

Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics: September 2022

Statistical release on Boiler Upgrade Scheme statistics for the estimation of capital grant uptake to support the installations of low carbon technologies in domestic and non-domestic buildings.

GOV.UK
@janrosenow Great thread, but can you please also mention that in Scotland we have a more generous scheme (£7.5k cashback and interest free loan). Many folk up here don't know that.
@magnatom good point, I should have mentioned that.
@janrosenow No problem. It's hard to write threads like this that cover everything! 😃
@magnatom @janrosenow 1) Great thread. Thank you. I would throw one very practical problem into the discussion though and it's design. I am lucky enough to be able to afford a heat pump but I've nowhere to put it. The way most of our houses are built doesn't allow for the unit to be installed. We simply do not have the space and there's another problem. The developer had done our (very small) garden in a way so any digging would damage drainage infrastucture.
@magnatom @janrosenow 2) Second issue for people is lack of a proper info campaign. Heat pumps run the water at a lower temp. That's the point. The best way to utilise that is by installing floor heating (and have a house designed for that). Most of our wooden frame houses would require a massive investment to do that. What the British government did was throw the term Hear Pump in the air and announce a grant knowing that we are simply not there.
@ivan @janrosenow I don't know the answer to your first question, bit I do know that you don't need underfloor heating for #HeatPumps to work well. My house has radiators throughout and I only had to replace one. Had the heat pump since May. Mostly runs at a COP (efficiency) of over 4 and had not dropped below 3.17. With gas/electricity prices at their current ratio Nesta calculated that so long as you average a COP of over 2.9 a heat pump will run cheaper than...
@ivan @janrosenow gas. If you can add #SolarPV and #batteries it improves further.