As the heat pump industry tries to understand the full implications of the Renewable Heat Incentive announcement from the Government, particularly relating to air source heat pumps, John Kellett looks at lessons that can be learnt from both this and from other studies.
There appears to be some confusion as to whether air source heat pumps are included in the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme but the announcements from DECC (Department for Energy and Climate Change) are actually quite clear.

Air-to-water systems will be included in the domestic part of the scheme when it starts in October 2012, and they will be eligible for a premium payment of £850 from July 2011.

For the commercial sector, the DECC statements say that the Government does not 'have evidence for the costs of air-to-water heat pumps outside the domestic sector', which is why they are not included in the commercial part of RHI - for now.

Confusion arisen

Where the confusion seems to have arisen though is that air-to-air systems are still under review because the Government is unclear about how to separate out the cooling element from the heating output.

However, the statements also say that, in the medium to long term, DECC anticipates both air-to-water and air-to-air 'playing a significant role in meeting our renewables and carbon targets'.


For me though, the bigger news is that the residential part of the scheme has been put back for 18 months when RHI could have helped to significantly grow the air source market and we have an industry that is eager, primed and ready to go.
So, while this decision does leave it to the market to continue to find growth for the next year and a half, the inclusion of the one-off payment will at least give the industry a way of maintaining sales.

As we have always said though, key to any growth in the acceptance of air source heat pumps is the insistence on the highest standards of performance possible and together, we need to find ways to collectively prove the efficiency levels we know the technology can achieve.

As a manufacturer, we have been actively involved in the year-long trials being conducted by the Energy Saving Trust (EST). We are not the only ones and, personally, I have been pleased with how our Ecodan systems have performed.
However, some coverage and analysis of the EST Report has missed the key messages and focused on the fact that a few of the air source and ground source systems being monitored performed badly or worse than expected.

For me, there are three important lessons from the EST trials that are also pertinent in terms of RHI.

First, heat pumps will not work effectively if they are fitted to an unsuitable property. Secondly, they need to be sized, commissioned, installed and maintained properly by suitably qualified professionals. And thirdly, the end user needs to understand how to get the best out of the system. I was therefore pleased to see that the RHI proposal contains a reference to the thermal efficiencies of properties being considered before renewable technologies are installed, as this is the most cost-effective place to start.
There is no sense at all in fitting a ground source or an air source heat pump system - or any other renewable technology for that matter - into a property unless the building has had all the insulation improvements possible.

Links payments to MCS scheme

The second thing about RHI is that it links payments to the MCS scheme and we would support this because it is only by ensuring that systems are correctly installed that we, as a manufacturer, can know that our technology is being given the chance to work to its best.

We have now recruited almost a thousand Ecodan installation companies and we are actively encouraging and supporting them in achieving MCS Accreditation.
And thirdly, we all need to play our part in educating building owners and end users into how to get the best out of the systems.

End users need to grasp the fact that heat pumps perform best at low water temperatures, but we live in a country where, in the residential sector, everyone is used to gas and oil-fired systems pumping very hot water around radiators.
This is not the best way to control indoor temperatures or the most cost-effective, but we need a major cultural change to move away from this 'traditional' thinking.

We recently monitored an Ecodan system providing heating to a four-bed house near Luton and during December 2010, when temperatures fell below zero for much of the month, the homeowners enjoyed an indoor temperature of 20°C. This was obtained with an average flow temperature of 35°C with the heat pump averaging a COP of 3.0 for the entire month.

So the technology can work and we are able to demonstrate that it will work effectively all year round.

What we as an industry need to do now, is find every opportunity to prove this, while ensuring that we continue to raise installation standards.