The secret to high heat pump efficiencies
Consumer Advice
We have collected data from 50 heat pumps from a 1 year period, and have data for another 57 incoming for the same year. These figures will be reflected and updated on the below graphs as the data comes in. The installations were completed by engineers who had completed online heating theory training, and 85% of which had not installed a heat pump previously, or completed any other heat pump training.
This analysis has aimed to explore several questions that are often raised around heat pumps. Specifically:
- Can heat pumps perform well in older properties? A common narrative for heat pump is that they will only work in new, well insulated properties.
- How do Heat Geek installations compare to others? In the past year, there have been reports published from several large scale trials, notably the Electrification of Heat Project. These systems achieved an average SCOP of 2.8.
- How well do systems perform compared to their predicted performance? Before a heat pump is installed, a predicted performance will be made.
The findings show that these Heat Geek trained installations achieved sufficiently higher efficient heat pumps than the national average. In addition, the work highlights that property age is not a proxy for if a heat pump will work, or how efficient it is among some others.
All of our data come from on board measuring directly from the heat pump (currently Vaillant). The results and metrics will be updated as we continue to gather data from these systems.
The impact of property age?
Traditional thinking for heat pumps is that older properties are less efficient for heat pump installations. Older properties generally have lower thermal performance, both having high amounts of heat loss through walls, floors and ceilings, and with lower air tightness leading to a lot more heat being lost through ventilation.
Figure 1 compares the Seasonal Coefficient of Performance (sCOP) of systems against property age. Data is displayed for both the predicted performance and actual. The plot only shows data for heating performance, which was selected as this is more impacted by the building fabric than the hot water efficiency performance.
Systems on average achieve a SCOP of 4.20 for heating only. It can be seen that this includes several examples of properties built before 1925, and these are homes with generally poor thermal performance compared to modern building standards.
Finally, the predicted performance of systems before installation was 3.85, meaning that systems were performing over 10% more efficiently than expected.
Figure 1: SCOP vs Property Age
Figure 2 shows the same graph as Figure 1, but now is just filtered to Heat Geek Elites. This is a select cohort of installers who have both gone through the Heat Geek training and have extensive practical experience installing heat pump systems. For this set of installations, the average SCOP has increased to 4.48.
Figure 2: SCOP vs Building Age, focussing on Heat Geek Elite Installations
Systems Including Hot Water Demand
Figures 1 and 2 displayed the SCOP without hot water demand. This was selected to help explain the impact of the building fabric on the SCOPs. However, it is important to consider the hot water heat, as this demand does generally lower the SCOP of a system. Figure 3 shows the SCOP for the Heat Geek Elite installations, including hot water and heating. This results in a reduction in the SCOP from 4.48 to 4.26.
Caveats
We are continuing to build our evidence base to support our views that high efficiency heat pump installations are not an exception, but can become the norm with proper system design and training. Currently, the sample size of this analysis is too small to perform detailed statistical testing, but we will add to this work as more systems come online.
Meet our data scientist - Dr Mikey Harper
Michael will be analysing and watching our installations moving forward, picking our key metrics on how we can improve practices over time and also increase prediction accuracy. If you have any questions, about this data or work, we’d love to hear from you! Please comment below.
Results Comparison
Take a look at our heat geeks live installations here.
Watch them live here
Enjoyed this article? Want to know more about system design and how to become a top heating engineer?
Leave a Reply
One comment on “The secret to high heat pump efficiencies”
Share this article
Company number: 11887015
we qualify for the eco4 scheme, whereby our six bedroom Victorian property located in mid Devon is to have external wall insulation installed, as well as a Daiken 17kwh ashp 18 radiators and a hot water cylinder.
We have no central heating system, are are dependent on a 4kwh roof mounted solar array, and oil fired electric radiators to heat the rooms. Our roof is well insulated, but we have single glazed windows.
It has been suggested that we use the services of CB affiliated company, who are part owned by EDF to do the installation of the new central heating system. I am thinking that we would be better to install underfloor heating on the ground floor, thereby also including an insulant to prevent heat loss through the concrete non insulated floor. We may have to pay an extra amount to have this done, since it will cost more than large areas of radiators. But we will have the chance to put our furniture and fittings wherever we wish. We argue that the money saved by not using a gshp, which entails a lot of excavating would be better spent in installing underfloor heating to improve the efficiency of the ashp system.
your company, involved, as it is, partly in teaching the theory of Heat pump technology, would be the best prople to design our system. Would your company be prepared to look at what CB have designed for us before we go ahead? I expect that we could persuade them to make any adjustments that this might entail, were you to recommend them.There would be a cost to this obviously, but it could be worth it. I follow you on You tube regularly, and am familiar with heat pump technology to a limited extent.