22 SOLUTIONS FOR LOW ENERGY DOMESTIC RETROFIT AT SCALE ROUND TABLE REVIEW
COLLECTIVE APPROACH Simon Kemp of Warmworks explained how the joint venture (between Energy Saving Trust, Changeworks and Sureserve) was maximising the opportunities to upgrade at scale
Solutions & sponsor questions Heat pumps
Heat pump specialist manufacturer NIBE’s attendee, product manager Rick Clarke, prompted some in-depth and frank discussions about the practical application of heat pumps in different retrofi t contexts with his question to the group. He asked where the pinch-points currently were across policy, design, installation and homeowner engagement that were holding back a widespread rollout of heat pumps in UK retrofi ts, i.e. “where the heat pump rollout breaks down.” Andrew Tod of Sureserve said this disconnect was occurring
around “communicating to the homeowner about the costs and the benefi ts, the disruption, what’s really needed to make it successful in a retrofi t context.” There were challenges around consumer awareness of heat pumps in use, he said, and the need for better awareness campaigns had to be confronted. Tod added that while there’s been “huge ambition and drive by Government, there’s a huge gap [between that and installation]”. He said the recent “warm and fuzzy” public awareness campaign “fell a bit fl at, and outside of LinkedIn I didn’t see it anywhere.” He said that due to a lack of a concerted information campaign, “what you hear about heat pumps is negative, from the press, probably because it’s been delivered to homes that aren’t suitable, or to homeowners that don’t understand them.” Cypren Edmonds answered Clarke, saying that it “most commonly breaks down at the assessment and design stage; if heat loss isn’t properly understood, and if the systems are wrongly sized, and expectations are mismanaged.” He added: “Homeowners don’t know how to ask the questions.” Ben Whiterod from Social Infrastructure said “a lot of it comes down to the enabling work required for it to be an effi cient install,” for example “they might need to upgrade the fabric which isn’t in their budget.”
Noise, space and aesthetics improvements were also discussed, and Whiterod admitted: “Quieter models are starting to come, but at a cost.”
Simon Kemp said that “there was a sense of fear around the cost [of heat pump installs], which is quite reasonable.” He said that a 2020 Department of Business and Energy (BEIS) Warmworks project installed heat pumps for free across homes in South East Scotland. In Scotland, said Kemp, “we can still fi t gas boilers, if it’s the most economically advantageous thing to do for the homeowner, while to get the funding in England, “it’s either a heat pump or storage heaters, you can’t have a gas boiler, so you’re having to do more creative around that heating system to make sure you get the additional effi ciencies.”
He said that in the private sector, the £7,500 grant for owners might still mean they’d still have to pay the same amount on an installation in a larger house, “more than potentially replacing the gas boiler.” Kemp added: “there’s no real stick to say they have to get to a decarbonised position.” Currently, it was “motivated by the able to pay part, people buying into the green issue.”
Naomi Sadler also offered the insight from her experience that “some manufacturers say they can’t size up a heat pump until they have received my SAP calculation.” She said that a scheme that her fi rm SEES had surveyed and air-tested for EPC in 2012 (which only required a sample to be tested), around 150 units had to have all heat pumps removed because they were “substantially undersized, because the client didn’t pay attention to the fact there were lots of rooms over garages.”
Delegates added that the potential benefi ts of heat pumps for comfort and health, beyond just energy savings, were not being fully appreciated by customers or being used to sell the concept at scale. It was also important to harness performance data to help specifi ers and customers make informed decisions.
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