Eco 4 solar and heat pumps.

Not so Dave, the figures I have used are those quoted by the OP (£70/m summer, £150 in winter) which makes £1320/yr total at the moment.

A heat pump operating during the day will not save much against the storage heaters due to the higher daytime rate you mention.

I doubt they would save more than £250 a year, even with a heat pump grant that would be quite a long payback.

IMHO the OP would be better to get a grant to upgrade the storage heaters which would entail a lot less hassle!

That is likely to be an advert from a independent company and isn't endorsed by the Government or local Council.

Planning for the future, how long is a cheaper (E7) rate going to last with everyone charging their electric vehicles and possibly everyone with a heat pump needing to leave their underfloor heating on earlier in the mornings?

I've had a very quick check of E7 night and day costs, and the difference is more than any gain from using a heat pump during the day and taking out your night storage heaters. BICBW here.

One thing about a wet system, is that you can use a multitude of sources, such as wood burning stove with back-boiler, oil or gas as well as a heat pump. Night electricity use for 'storage' boilers is also possible.

You are correct in that although replacing the old storage rads with new more effective ones is a good option.

An excellent video, thanks. I hope that aprilsweetheartrose watches it all the way through, and sees the size of the external unit, pipework, and the hot water tank, and some of the complexities of getting the system to run as designed.

IMV, she should see about getting financial support for upping the insulation in her bungalow and replacing her storage rads, as a simpler solution than a highly-technical and costly heat pump.

The guy in the video correctly states that air sourced heat pumps can work well but for the majority of people in the UK it's not just a matter of exchanging a gas/oil boiler for a heat pump as a lot of cowboy advertisers which have sprung up overnight would have you believe.

And the lady has storage rads on E7, which would cost a great deal, with disruption to fit radiators everywhere plus almost certainly a new hot tank too.

It's worth saying that that room has big sash windows which appear to be single glazed, which would explain the high heat loss and hence large radiators needed. That room has 1.7kW of losses - when I did the calcs my entire house come out at 5kW.

Theo

In many smaller houses, the size of the radiators needed may mean that there is only one feasible location in a room - which may also be the only feasible location for a settee, wardrobes or similar. Making rooms impractical for their intended use.

Whatever you do make sure you check out the installation company VERY thoroughly on Trustpilot or Google, especially the honest negative reports. There are some absolute cowboys out there solely in business to transfer money from you or a grant scheme into their coffers. They promise the earth but lying is a way of life among them. Industry registration body membership means very little. The cowboys I had the misfortune to become embroiled with pay a subscription to a body called HIES but when push came to shove HIES chose to believe their paymasters rather than me. Fortunately NAPIT were much more professional and very significant remedial work was wrung out of the company. Unless you anticipate living a long time i wouldn't expect anything of benefit from changing to a heat pump at current electricity prices. Solar panels can be beneficial but you've missed the boat on incentive payments. The original Feed In Tariffs were fantastic and I was fortunate enough to get in on phase 1 with tempter prices for the electricity generated, index linked as well. Currently with inflation adjustments I get approximately 70 pence per unit for every unit generated and it doesn't matter if I use the power myself for free or export it out to the grid. It sounded too good to be true but it was genuine. Currently the generation equipment has come down in prices but the FIT scheme is no longer open to new installations. The present arrangement is to have panels (normally on the roof) an inverter and a battery with link to the electricity mains. During sunny days the panels generate, the energy goes to the inverter/control unit and if your house needs it it passes into your appliances. Any excess from the panels is used to charge your battery for use later. If the battery is fully charged excess generation is then exported to the mains. Whatever you have available to export can be "sold" to your electricity company but you will struggle to get a decent price for it. By careful timed use of appliances, lights. TV etc it's possible to supply all your electrical needs "in summer" when days are long, warm and bright and you don't need heat. As winter approaches the days become shorter and duller. This means you generate less power than you use so the battery will not build up sufficient charge for your daily needs and power will be drawn from the mains. To make matters worse a heat pump will be working hard in winter and what electricity your panels do make will be rapidly gobbled up. I wouldn't entertain laying out money on a solar panel system at current equipment prices and rates per unit sold. Others may disagree of course.

Your figures are correct. That is what we paid last year ( we had insulation put in last year and that does seem to have cut the bills . But we also didnt have the coldest winter). It will be dearer this year I am sure and the electric company have estimated £1600 for the year on the tariff we fixed for ( for the year)

Furthermore whilst its not hard to get a gas or oil boiler to kick out

even at 3:1 uplift, that's still 10kw - 45A or so - needing to be pulled from a house whose supply may well be fused at 60A.

And imagine as whole streetful of them and their impact on a grid fed by birdchoppers and birdshit collectors.

The average house heat loss (coldest UK day) has been stated at around 8 to 10kW. So maybe 3kW or 4kW input to a heat pump and less during the milder days. Perhaps an immersion top up for a tank of hot water.

Although gas boilers of 30 to 40kW may be fitted to give a supply of hot water you wouldn't want 40kW for CH unless it could modulate down by

Yes, there will be a problem when everyone wants their "extra" 10kW at the same time on a cold winters day, as well as charging up their EVs. It's not just the intermittency of the green renewable solutions that is the problem but the infrastructure in our streets may not be able to cope. I personally know one person who had to downsize the (ideal) ASHP solution because of the cost involved in running a new supply to the house. This was in a rural area on a 1960s(?) built road/estate.

As mentioned before it's not just changing a boiler over for the majority of ASHP installations. It's performing the correct heat loss calculations and sizing things like radiators for the best results. However, installers of gas boilers (new and replacement) are meant to be doing this now and sizing gas boilers so that they are running at the most efficient condensing mode through-out the heating season. I doubt if that is happening in 99% of gas boiler installations.

Without knowing the size of your property, the £1600 for the year does not seem excessive if it includes your heating and general electricity useage, a heat pump is unlikely to save you much on your bills as it would mostly use day rate electricity whereas your storage rads using E7 will be at a lower price.

My current 3 year E7 fixed price tariff ends in a couple of weeks and I'm booked to go onto a 1 year fixed E7 "loyalty" tariff with octopus. From 21p per unit day rate there's a jump to 33.79p per unit. Night rate will become 15.6p per unit. I reckon I'm very likely to go back to an oil fired boiler when the heat pump phased grant payment scheme I'm tied into comes to an end in another 18months.

Oil is presently at around 10p/kWh (75p/l)