You can think of them like a fridge in reverse: an outdoor unit takes in heat from the air surrounding your home and transfers it to a coolant liquid.
This is all done with a relatively small amount of electricity, which itself can be sourced from green sources such as a solar panel or wind turbine to keep the environmental impact even lower.There are two types of heat pump – air source and ground source. The former takes in ambient air from the air, as the name suggests, while the latter extracts it from the sun and the earth using underground pipes.
British Gas, meanwhile, said in January it will price match any offer made by a rival company for an accredited installation of an air source heat pump. It has set a starting price of £2,999 per installation, after the grant has been applied.To get a good idea of how a heat pump could save you money, you can make a rough calculation based on the energy efficiency of your home, the amount of energy you use, the size of your home and the price of energy.
From 1 October, the average price cap for gas is £0.103/kWh, making the annual cost of gas consumption is in this instance £1,205.10. The average gas standing charge is £0.28 per day, so the annual standing charge cost is £102.20.An air source heat pump, meanwhile, would deliver that same heat demand at a rate of three times the amount of electricity it uses, making the same typical home require around 3,315 kWh of electricity to run it a year.
The firm estimates that replacing a typical gas boiler with an air source heat pump would save £187 in running costs, £102 due to there being no gas standing charge, around £159 on maintenance and up to £109, thanks to a smart energy tariff. “We’ve got a very well insulated house, with solar panels on the roof and batteries in the garage to store any excess, and we’ve got a heat pump. We’ve tried to make the whole thing as energy efficient as possible.