Improvements In Domestic Heat Pumps

By John Ross, Research Lecturer, and MCS Heat Pump Inspector for Ireland
Consumer acceptance of domestic heat pumps technologies has improved over the past few years which is helpful as this is part of the UK strategy to reduce carbon emissions from buildings.

Domestic heat pumps are considered as an important carbon saving technology, given the ongoing decarbonisation of the electricity supply system.

The Energy Saving Trust (EST) undertook the UK’s first largescale heat pump field trial, which monitored 83 systems to address the lack of independent evaluation of heat pump performance.

As part of the trial, the Open University studied the consumers’ experience of using a heat pump.

An in-depth user survey investigated the characteristics, behaviour, and satisfactions of private householders and social housing residents using ground source and air source heat pumps for space and/or water heating, and examined the influence of user-related factors on measured heat pump system efficiency. The surveys found that most users were satisfied with the reliability, heating, hot water, warmth and comfort provided by their heat pump system.

Analysis of user characteristics showed that higher system efficiencies were associated with greater user understanding of their heat pump system and their controls and running parameters.

The analysis also found that the more efficient systems in the sample were more frequently located in the private dwellings than at the social housing sites and this difference was significant.

This is explained by the interaction between differences in the systems, dwellings and users at the private and social housing sites.

These findings would be fully reflected by the improvements that I have witnessed as I inspect heat pump systems under the MCS standards.

In the past few years the quality of the heat pump installations has greatly improved, with customer satisfaction more obvious than in years gone by and the overall design and management of systems completed to a high standard in general.

There has been a huge step made in my opinion on the integration of heat pump technologies alongside other renewable systems; photovoltaic, wind, solar, etc, also installed in a bivalent way with existing oil and gas boilers.

The greater the knowledge of the customer and their system controls, the usage patterns of their systems employed to meet their lifestyle, then the greater the returns will be in terms of energy savings.

As system controls improve and we can use more internet communications hopefully this improvement can be extended into a complete energy saving utility