Ed Milibandʼs Energy department suggests a new-fangled approach to home heating: using both heat pumps and boilers together. The plan comes up as many britʼs homes dont have enough room for heat pump water tanks
The governments target is pretty big — they want to see 600k heat pump setups by 2028 (right now its just about 40k from last year). The price-tag is still an eye-opener though: heat pumps cost around £14‚000 to put in while regular boilers are way cheaper at £2-4k‚ even with the governments £7‚500 help-out
Hereʼs what makes these systems special:
* Heat pumps run central heating
* Small gas boilers make hot water
* System works for homes without storage space
* Less building work needed
Installing heat pumps in homes can be very disruptive‚ often involving installing storage cylinders to hold the hot water they produce. But 60pc of UK homes do not have storage cylinders and lack space to put one in
The tech is super-efficient — one unit of power gives you four units of heat (which is pretty neat). These hybrid-systems could help cut down on the UKs home heating carbon problem which makes up about 18% of all emissions; right now thereʼs 25m homes using gas and 2m using oil-based heating
Louise Howlett from R A Brown Heating points out that while hybrid systems can save money and help the planet they need more upkeep — its two machines to look after instead of one. The Energy dept says theyre backing this idea through different grant programs