Notice

Heat Pump Ready Programme: Stream 2 Wave 2 projects

Updated 30 April 2024

The Heat Pump Ready Programme Stream 2 Wave 2 competition supports applied research and development projects, focused on driving down the lifetime costs of domestic heat pump deployment, and improving the domestic consumer experience and acceptability of heat pumps through technology, tools, business model and process innovation.

It aims to develop solutions that:

• improve the ease of heat pump deployment in homes that are ‘complex to decarbonise’ by addressing physical, material, locational, technological, regulatory, or social challenges
• develop innovative solutions to enable heat pumps to be deployed in ‘distress purchase’ situations when a new home heating system is required urgently
• improve performance and/or reduce costs of domestic heat pumps with low-GWP refrigerants (below 150 GWP), while ensuring safety
• reduce the lifetime costs or improve the overall lifetime performance of domestic heat pumps or improve the domestic consumer experience of using and living with a heat pump

HomelyLifetime

Lead partner: Evergreen Energy Ltd
Grant total: £465,991.12

Project summary

HomelyLifetime seeks to overcome the challenges we have seen through our experience as a leading heat pump installer and smart tech provider to improve lifetime performance and costs of heat pumps by using heat pump data to reduce friction between Installer, Customer and Smart tech provider. In too many cases, customers who have heat pumps installed are not receiving the required levels of information to properly understand how the heat pump works, which leads them to tinker with settings, leading to suboptimal performance or create errors.

A recent analysis of heat pump installation data found a significant proportion were not completed properly, which was leading to short cycling and other errors impacting performance. Without the intelligent Homely data, it would be very difficult to identify the cause of this and who is responsible for fixing it. This leads to customer dissatisfaction and their sharing of negative responses slows the appetite for uptake in their wider community, which impacts uptake.

Feedback from our installers shows they want more proactive maintenance alerts, so they can identify issues early, so problems are resolved quickly and often remotely. This improves the product lifetime by removing issues before they impact the household, while also saving costs of unnecessary parts replacements, reducing lifetime costs. They also want help to upskill consumers to understand the product to reduce callouts caused by user error, which reduces their ability to prioritise new heat pump installations and costs of wasted visits.

Feedback from end users shows they require more information on how the heat pump works and how to achieve best lifetime value from the installation.

This prompted the HomelyLifetime concept to overcome these issues by:

• Creating an installer portal providing proactive insight into issues arising with installed heat pumps, by building in deep knowledge of heat pump installation and minute by minute operation to provide not only information on known issues, but also identifying issues which may impact long term heat pump performance or lifespan – such as short cycling.
• Prompting and encouraging good user behaviour through the app that improves long-term performance of the heat pump, maximizing its life span, reducing maintenance requirements, and optimising day-to-day running costs.
• Streamline the handover process between installer and customer, providing customer guidance and insight as they start their heat pump journey to optimise the setup and configuration, ensuring that customers are fully satisfied with their new heating system and support services.

Thermly Distress Diagnostics

Lead partner: Thermly Limited
Partners: Lendology CIC
Grant total: £518,362.73

Project summary

58% of properties replace their heating systems when ‘in distress’ i.e. when the heating system is either broken or on its last legs.

This project seeks to develop the data analytics capability, the underlying intelligence, and associated web-based software, that can identify with relative certainty when households are going to need a heating system replacement in advance.

This is with the aim of avoiding, wherever possible, the issue of ‘distress’, which currently prohibits the ability and willingness of households to transition to more sustainable heating systems like heat pumps. This is because current timescales for installing heat pumps, for example, mean those households would be left far too long without heat.

In addition, we will research and develop a viable business model for installing temporary heating systems for those already in distress situations, buying time to enable those households to make more sustainable decisions.

Our aim is to study technical drivers of distress situations in great detail, understand and identify their triggers and impact, alongside human behaviour and attitudes towards heating system transition, and build the software that overcomes these barriers to heat pump adoption using predictive analytic techniques and machine learning.

Nusku Fully UK Designed and Manufactured Heat Pump for Distressed Purchases Accelerator

Lead partner: Nusku Ltd
Partners: University of Salford
Grant total: £727,480.01

Project summary

The Nusku project aim is to create an innovative heat pump solution which is designed specifically for easy replacement of gas boilers in a cost-effective way, without the need for major internal home rework which most existing heat pump solutions require.

The unique approach encompasses all the required heat pump functionality into a sleek, outdoor unit as an all-in-one replacement for a gas boiler, ideal for the distress purchase market.

The project will move the solution from TRL5 through to TRL7/8, furthering the technology to a pre-production level solution which will be tested in the Salford Energy House to provide an independent assessment of performance.

The Flexible Heat Pump

Lead partner: Clear Blue Energy Ltd
Partners: Sourcethermal Limited, University of Liverpool, Pragmatic Energy Limited Grant total: £773,156.36

Project summary

The Flexible Heat Pump is a breakthrough innovation in the design and performance of vapour compression heat pumps.  An invention of academic partner, the Flexible Heat Pump cycle introduces a heat storage device into the Evans-Perkins cycle to recover, store, and reuse part of the sensible heat carried by the hot liquid refrigerant from the condenser, achieving a higher cycle efficiency.  It outperforms the conventional heat pumps, delivering:

• increased seasonal Coefficient of Performance (SCoP) by up to 20%
• more efficient/rapid defrosting of the evaporator without interrupting the ongoing supply of heat to the building
• the ability to integrate multiple heat sources, e.g. recovery of ‘waste’, solar thermal or geothermal heat into an air source heat pump

Hence, the Flexible Heat Pump can deliver significantly lower running costs than conventional heat pumps. This addresses a key barriers to mass market adoption of heat pumps – the total cost of ownership (TCO) currently being higher than the incumbent solution, fossil-fuelled boilers.

The Flexible Heat Pump has two key innovations which unlock these enhancements of the conventional heat pump cycle:

1. a compact thermal store integral to the vapour compression cycle, enabling the recovery of heat normally wasted to improve CoP, more efficient defrost cycles and secondary sources of heat input to be easily integrated
2. a multi-way valve enabling the operating mode to be changed between heat store charging and discharging

The Flexible Heat Pump cycle is applicable to any configuration of vapour compression heat pump and as such, has vast commercial potential.

Pricing Engine for Heat Pump Subscriptions

Lead partner: Fornax
Grant total: £293,830

Project summary

This project aims to deliver an innovative subscription-based model for heat pump deployment that eliminates upfront costs and simplifies the adoption process, making heat pumps financially accessible to a significantly broader range of consumers. The project’s cornerstone is a novel proprietary technology platform that collects, analyses, and models a wide range of relevant data to optimise cost, performance and credit quality.

This platform will allow Fornax to deliver its comprehensive, turnkey solution to retrofit customers, simplifying their installation process, ensuring system quality throughout its lifespan, and making heat pumps more affordable for the average homeowner.

Our innovations will enable us to price consumer subscriptions accurately, unlocking a sustainable, scalable financing model supported by institutional capital and enabling a unique business model that tackles both the financial and operational barriers to heat pump deployment. By reducing friction along the entire consumer journey and solving the key issue of affordability with a long-term financing solution, this project stands to significantly accelerate the rate of heat pump deployment by 2028.

Smart Temperature Automation Technology (STAT)

Lead partner: Passiv
Grant total: £989,691.00

Project summary

The UK government has set ambitious targets for supporting the growth of the heat pump market to 600,000 installations annually by 2028. This presents challenges: complex installations, unfamiliar heating and control systems, the risk of increased bills, and poor comfort outcomes. Further systemic problems arise from significantly increased electricity demands from heat pumps that will require a smarter and more flexible energy system.

Energy flexibility services will become increasingly valuable, with potential cost reductions of up to £10 billion annually across the energy system by 2050. Smarter heat pump controls will play a central role in achieving these savings. By tapping into these services, heat pumps can offer greater savings to consumers, increasing their attractiveness and rates of uptake.

Passiv has invested in developing new heat-pump controls, to be launched in 2024, to address installer and consumer related issues by providing installation and commissioning tools and enhancing the consumer experience through user-friendly hardware and software interfaces that leverage the familiarity and ease of use of traditional thermostats. The Passiv Smart Thermostat (PST) addresses the need for improved efficiency in heat pumps and helps consumers transition to low-carbon heating. It provides ongoing, future-proofed control capabilities including intelligent weather compensation that delivers an EST validated COP improvement of 17%.

This project extends the functionality of the PST and enhances the consumer experience based on user feedback from project trials. It will develop a unique hardware prototype that offers standalone connectivity and integration with the smart meter infrastructure, thereby ensuring that all customer groups can benefit from energy flexibility services. In doing so, consumers will benefit from heat pumps that automatically optimise against their electricity tariff and provide a fully automated response to demand flexibility opportunities without the need for consumer intervention or any loss of consumer comfort. PST will reduce the lifetime costs and improve the overall lifetime heat pump performance.

These benefits will be available to consumers for the price of a standard connected thermostat product with no service fee. This unique new product will be the first to provide a solution that minimises consumer costs through heat-pump efficiency improvement, tariff optimisation and DSR services. Importantly these benefits will not be constrained to the able-to-pay market, any household can benefit without needing a broadband connection or other technology interface. The consumer experience aims to be best in market, whether through the in-home hardware interfaces, or a mobile app.

Natural Refrigerant based Heat Pump (NATURAL HEAT)

Lead partner: FeTu
Grant total: £465,763.11

Project summary 

Achieving Net Zero by 2050 is challenging and requires innovation across the energy system. Heat pumps have been identified as a crucial technology that will be instrumental in such. Uptake in the UK, however, needs to be improved, with recent roadmaps citing a need to install 600,000 heat pumps by 2028. Barriers to uptake still need to be addressed.

FeTu’s heat pump, utilising their novel, highly efficient compressor, aims to demonstrate performances (comparable to current state-of-the-art), whilst using natural fluids.

This 12-month industrial research project will see such a system’s design, manufacture, assembly, and testing.

vTherme Hub

Lead partner: Vital Energi Utilities Limited
Partners: University of Birmingham
Grant total: £563,436.40

Project summary

Deployment of heat pumps in mid- and high-rise buildings is both technically complex and commercial difficult. The Project is the development a standardised modular vTherm Hub (vT Hub) which incorporates innovations in heat generation and storage to supply heat as a service (HaaS) to homes in mid- and high-rise buildings. The vT Hub is designed to simplify and accelerate deployment using inherent flexibility to enable heat to be sold at affordable cost.

CUBEX 

Lead partner: Mixergy Limited 
Partners: Harlequin Manufacturing Limited 
Grant total: £530,080.20 

Project summary

CUBEX will disrupt the UK market with a novel heat pump proposition which is accessible to smaller homes which are hard to treat using traditional monobloc ASHP solutions.

Project Sojourner 

Lead Partner: EDF Energy R&D UK Centre Limited 
Partners: EDF Energy Customers Limited, Kestrix Ltd 
Grant Total: £486,154.77 

Project Summary

Project Sojourner aims to deliver an occupant-centric, personalised, and fully digitised ‘Homeowner’s Roadmap to Net Zero’ that recommends actions needed to increase home suitability for a future heat pump installation in an engaging and innovative 3D interface that overlays retrofit options onto a digital representation of customers’ own homes. In addition, with the design of innovative financial propositions, consumers will be motivated to proceed.  

Using unique data points available to ourselves as an energy supplier, combined with technologies and systems already developed by the consortium members, a full picture of the properties’ heating system and insulation status quo can be created, broken down and referenced back to the user with actionable step by step advice, pricing, funding options and recommended contractors to do the work. The user can then address these issues on a timeline that works for them, so that when the time comes for them to replace their existing boiler, their home will already be optimally placed to receive a heat pump, reducing the number of installations that are rejected due to the property being unsuitable.  

By offering homeowners a clear path to readiness, we aim to minimise pre-heat-pump-install visits. This not only reduces costs and burdens for residents, but also streamlines the heat pump installation process. This new level of readiness not only brings additional energy saving benefits to homeowners but accelerates the country’s progress towards net-zero goals. 

Through a multi disciplined consortium of energy experts EDF and digital innovators Kestrix, the project team is well positioned to develop the technologies and systems required to accelerate the residential market’s readiness for heat pump installations. Leveraging the combination of cutting-edge technology, industry expertise and user-centric design to create a seamless and intuitive experience for homeowners. 

The project’s roadmap includes advanced analytics and machine learning algorithms to analyse and interpret data, ensuring personalised and accurate recommendations. Additionally, the integration of a dynamic grant finder engine to assist homeowners in identifying potential funding opportunities for their energy efficiency retrofits. By combining these technological advancements with the consortium’s existing understanding of the residential energy market, the project aims to create a unique platform that is not only a leader in digital innovation but also a catalyst for sustainable ecological change in UK housing.