Will A Heat Pump Save Money?
Will a heat pump save money?
A lot of customers ask the question can a heat pump save money? and the simple answer is yes! Due to the dramatic rise in wholesale gas and oil and despite government intervention, energy prices will likely continue heading skyward over the next few years.
Understandably people are becoming increasingly concerned about their energy bills and general cost of living. With the uncertainty around where our future gas and oil will come from and the general worldwide demand for energy, it stands to reason we are all looking at alternative options for heating our homes and businesses. Pursuing renewable and sustainable sources of energy HAS to be the future if we have any chance of the UK being self-sufficient and not relying on imported gas and oil.
Due to this shift in thinking, we are now experiencing a significant increase in air source heat pumps inquiries and we are here to help you cut through the myths around heat pumps and explain if fitting one in your home is a sensible option.
Most homes in the UK have gas or oil boilers to provide for their heating and hot water requirements. However, alternative technologies are available of which, air source heat pumps are one.
Awareness of heat pumps is growing, fuelled by (if you’ll pardon the pun) the rising energy prices and a greater desire to reduce our use of fossil fuels and limit our impact on the changing climate.
It’s thought these major drivers will soon lead to heat pumps overtaking gas and oil boilers as the preferred choice for how we heat our homes until such time hydrogen technology evolves.
There are many questions surrounding heat pumps though, so we’re answering some of those here.
Will a heat pump save me money?
Heat pumps work off electricity, so is a heat pump a viable option to reduce energy costs, or is it just moving the expense to electricity? And do they use a lot of electricity? Fair questions – nobody wants a bigger bill than they started with using their existing fossil fuel energy supply!
It is true, heat pumps run on electricity however, the important thing to remember is that heat pumps are a lot more energy efficient than even the most efficient condensing boiler.
Modern condensing boilers typically run at around 85-90 percent efficiency, whereas, over 12 months, a heat pump could easily reach 300 to 400 percent efficiency or more depending on how it’s designed and what it’s connected to.
How? Well, an example of this would be a heat pump using 1kW of electricity and producing 3kW- 4kw of heat in return.
If your boiler is running at 85% efficiency, it means for every 1kW of gas input you are only getting 0.85kw back in the heat: the rest is lost in the combustion process. That’s wasteful.
If you would like to know how efficient your current boiler is in percentage efficiency terms, type your boiler details into this database and look for winter seasonal efficiency. This will show your boiler efficiency stated by the manufacturer for running your heating (which makes up the majority of your gas bill) over 12 months.
So, we know heat pumps are more efficient but that still doesn’t answer the question about electricity usage.
How much it will cost to run your new heat pump will depend heavily on how well insulated your home is.
The better your home is insulated, the smaller the heat pump required to heat it, and the cheaper it will be to run. This is something we work out for you early in the process of designing your heat pump system because we need to make sure it’s a viable, cost-effective option for you.
We’re an accredited MCS company ( Microgeneration Certification Scheme ). As a fundamental part of the quality management system, we signed up for we have to prove the heat pump we are fitting will be fit for purpose by providing you with a performance estimate.
Remember, all houses lose heat, whether they’re insulated or not. It’s only a question of how long it takes to lose that heat. So, we carry out room-by-room heat loss calculations, then we input your current energy tariff information into a calculation tool. This works out the heat pump usage over 12 months based on the amount of total heat your property loses and takes into account the temperature the heat pump needs to run at to match this heat loss.
You don’t hear much about this magic document but is there to protect you! It’s there so you know all the facts regarding running costs upfront before your gas or oil boiler is pulled off the wall! This process allows you, the customer, to make an informed decision not only about reducing your carbon but also on what the change from a boiler to heat pump is going to cost in electric going forward.
To show a rough example of a heat pump’s electricity usage over 12 months, I have put together an example below.
Please, bear in mind, poor insulation increases the amount of energy required (kilo watts) required to heat your home.
The typical home in the UK requires 12,000 kilo watt hours for heating and hot water per year.
A Vaillant Aro Therm 10 KW heat pump at a flow temperature of 50 degrees Celsius is suitable for radiators as well as under floor heating has a seasonal efficiency of 3.85. (By the way, this equates to 385% efficiency!)
At our current silly electricity prices (this only a guide based on electricity prices when this post was written), I will use 30p per kilo watt hour of electricity.
So, we take the number of kilo watt hours required and divide them by the efficiency of the pump and multiply that by the rate to get our running costs:
12,000 / 3.85 = electricity usage of 3116 KW Hours
3116 kW hours X 0.30p = £935 per year running costs
Find out more about Vaillant Arotherm Plus Heat Pumps
Please note – this is just an example to show how to work it all out. The efficiency of the heat pumps is affected by the design of the system within the property and the flow temperature the heat pump is set at. Under floor heating systems running at 35 deg flow temperature increase the efficiency of this particular heat pump to 500% !
In that instance, for the same amount of heat output (12000 kW), this heat pump would cost £720 a year to run.
I hope this article has been useful. Please use the contact form below if you are interested in having a heat pump installed. Or, if you would simply like to discuss how you might increase the efficiency of your heating system, we are here to help with free advice on your energy saving journey.
Will a heat pump save me money? is a blog written by Dean Dawe our managing director.
If you would like to understand more about how a heat pump work please click here for one of our previous knowledge centre posts.
