28 September 2022
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More than £15 million of funding has been awarded to 24 projects across the UK as part of the government's Heat Pump Ready programme.
The government says the key objectives of Heat Pump Ready are to reduce costs and increase the performance of domestic heat pumps, minimise disruption in homes during the process of heat pump installation and develop financial models that support an increase in heat pump deployment.
Stream 1 is providing over £2 million of funding across 11 projects in Newcastle, Sunderland, Leeds, Oxford, Greenwich, Bristol, Teignbridge, Fenland, Perth, Cherwell and Bridgend. These projects are working to develop feasibility studies for innovative ways to increase the deployment of domestic heat pumps within their local area. Projects will then use their project findings to apply for up to £9 million for Stream 1, Phase 2, to trial the solutions they have developed.
Stream 3 is providing up to £5 million of funding to support learning across the Heat Pump Ready Programme so evidence can be shared across participants and with external heat pump stakeholders.
The Stream 2 projects, to be completed by February 2035, are:
City Science Corporation
Project title: Advanced Modelling for Heat as a Service
BEIS Grant Value: £498,692.32
Project partners: None
This project aims to transform our current understanding of heat in the domestic setting and to provide a scalable approach to heat pump financing and deployment throughout the UK. This will be achieved via the prototyping, deployment, and testing of a Heat-as-a-Service (HaaS) modeling solution, which will provide decarbonisation pathways and financing models.
The solution features a modular design, interacting to provide a full HaaS offering. Sub-sets of these modules will also provide highly valuable use-cases, for example by enabling key insights into which buildings heat pumps can provide a viable and attractive heating solution.
Through the facilitation of a complete and accurate financing package, this project hopes to enable increased financing for combined heat pump and retrofit solutions, thus accelerating heat pump deployment at the lowest cost to the consumer.
EDF
Project title: Catalyst – Accelerating the heat pump journey
BEIS Grant Value: £395,220.94
Project partners: Daikin UK Ltd, SPEN, University of Sheffield
The Catalyst project aims to simplify and improve the efficiency of the heat pump installation process by creating a consumer-centric digital platform to support customers through the whole heat pump installation journey.
This digital solution aims to improve the customer journey by streamlining the required pre-installation steps into one remote survey, adopting a self-serve approach and reducing the amount of information required upfront. The outcome will be an end-to-end digital solution which will support customers in identifying innovative heat pump solutions, tailored to their profile.
Catalyst will bring together a consortium of organisations who have extensive experience and knowledge on the heat pump installation process, and will be split into three main digital modules: - Pre-survey assessment using basic customer-provided data and housing stock data, determining heat pump eligibility or providing advice on other steps required (e.g. insulation) to become eligible. - Remote survey and analysis, carrying out detailed design, quotation and installation plan. - Post-installation monitoring and customer ‘after care’ package to build long term relationships with customers.
Energiesprong
Project title: Integrated Comfort and Billing Service
BEIS Grant Value: £204,126.00
Project partners: None
Heat pumps can deliver warm and comfortable homes, and energy cost savings of over 50% when deployed as part of a high performance and high quality retrofit. This creates an opportunity for a ‘Comfort Plan’ to be offered, which provides guaranteed heating outcomes for occupants in return for a fee (which is no more than the total savings). This can help to fund the heat pump retrofit enabling greater deployment and support access to heat pumps through reducing the requirement for upfront capital investment.
This project will finalise the process and technology requirements to offer a seamless end to end Comfort Plan management service, and then develop and test the technical solutions required to enable delivery of this.
Developments in this scheme will be shared with Energiesprong projects in the initial contracted pipeline of 1,550 homes, aiming for solutions to be demonstrated within live projects.
Green Energy Options
Project title: AI Smart Heat Pathway
BEIS Grant Value: £474,703.18
Project partners: TBC
Green Energy Options are proposing an AI Smart Heath Pathway to enable rapid, high-quality and scalable heat pump deployment. This will be achieved through leveraging AI on Smart Meter and Smart Thermostat data to determine a personal net-zero pathway for each home, and size the subsequent appropriate heat pump, from actual measured data.
AI Smart Heat Pathway will help reduce the upfront costs of property survey and design and provide a viable customer success pathway towards net-zero heat for hard-to-treat homes. The project will be piloted across 150 homes, with the aim of scaling the AI Smart Heat Pathway nationwide subsequently.
Gen Game
Project title: Total Home Optimisation Management (THOM)
BEIS Grant Value: £762,522.55
Project partners: Evergreen Energy Ltd, Chameleon Technology (UK) Limited, TalkTalk, EnAPPsys Ltd, University of Salford
The THOM project aims to create a heat pump specialist Home Energy Management System (HEMS) supported by a full-package solution to help customers understand and maximise the benefits to their home, while reducing costs and carbon. This will be achieved by:
- Using smart meter data to identify customers who would benefit from heat pumps and inform them of savings.
- Sizing heat pumps based on a variety of data sources.
- Optimising home energy systems across heat pumps, PV, electric vehicle charging, battery storage and other energy assets to reduce costs and carbon.
- Providing access to flexibility markets to enhance the benefits and business case.
- Remaining energy supplier and product manufacturer agnostic, giving customers choice.
Guru Systems Ltd.
Project title: Guru Smart Heat Pumps: developing tools for social housing landlords to enable heat pump installation at scale across the UK
BEIS Grant Value: £445,943.00
Project partners: None
The Guru Smart Heat Pumps project is focused on finding solutions for large landlords who manage buildings or sites that contain multiple homes, such as housing associations and local authorities, through providing a holistic solution that understands the context of the heating system prior to the installation of heat pumps. Through continuously monitoring and analysing ongoing performance, the objective is to ultimately provide operators the ability to remotely adjust the settings as required.
The overall outcomes of the Guru Smart Heat Pumps project will be reduced initial capex spend, and improved heat pump performance in operation, resulting in fewer maintenance callouts, lower carbon emissions, and, most importantly, more comfortable residents with reduced heating costs. This will be achieved by providing tools and monitoring equipment to allow landlords to actively manage their heating system.
Guru Systems Ltd.
Project title: Guru Verify for Heat Pumps: delivering best practice install, commissioning and maintenance verification tools to the heat pump market
BEIS Grant Value: £475,162.00
Project partners: None
The Guru Verify for Heat Pumps project is focused on creating a modular mobile app and web platform which supports the correct installation, commissioning and maintenance of heat pumps. The platform verifies outcomes and stores heat pump settings in order to benchmark for future maintenance and efficiency improvements, and acts as a training resource for new heat pump engineers.
The modular nature of the product will allow for a dynamic service to provide apps and platforms for surveys, commissioning and subsequent maintenance which can be easily adjusted for different heat pumps and adapt to changing verification regimes depending on how the market evolves.
Hildebrand Technology Ltd.
Project title: Glow Heat Pump Community
BEIS Grant Value: £665,910.00
Project partners: Build Test Solutions Ltd, NJV Limited, Richard Carmichael Research & Consulting Ltd, Davies and Mckerr Ltd, SE2 Limited
The Glow Heat Pump Community project will improve the heat pump adoption customer journey, installer expertise, and outcomes by leveraging data from installations and enabling peer-to-peer learning and transparency. It will provide a data-driven solution to reduce complexity and uncertainty for consumers and provide data, tools and resources for installer decision-making and upskilling. Data and learning from every installation will be captured in structured Case Studies (including post-installation assessment) to share insights in a structured, useful and engaging way. The goal is to create a feedback loop of peer-to-peer learning, among consumers and installers, that continuously improves advice and stakeholder confidence, based on practical real-world experience.
Hoare Lea
Project title: Right sizing heat pumps
BEIS Grant Value: £505,442.37
Project partners: City Science Corporation, Purrmetrix, Places for People Group Limited
The ‘Right Sizing Heat Pumps’ project aims to reduce capital costs, operational costs, and grid infrastructure upgrade costs through developing a tool to properly size, efficiently monitor and optimise heat pump performance. This will be achieved by improving cost and viability through standardising the approach to sizing heat pumps.
Home Infrastructure Technology
Project title: Green Homeowner Loans
BEIS Grant Value: £367,507.20
Project partners: None
The aim of this project is to develop a Green Homeowner Loan to pave the way for mass adoption of green home improvements, by developing a fintech platform specifically designed to fund heat pumps and other green measures. Aiming to be financially attainable, this will help gain consumer buy-in and help increase the sale of heat pumps.
ICAX Ltd.
Project title: Heat Pump Manufacturing Automation for Scale and Cost
BEIS grant value: £923,816.56
Project partners: None
This project aims to tackle the cost barriers of heat pump deployment by designing and building a trial manufacturing assembly line for residential heat pumps, using state of the art analytical and physical tools. This will offer a systemic approach to optimised manufacturing based on current state of the art intelligent manufacturing design and operation capabilities. By re-designing the heat pump assembly process, the objective is to reduce unit costs and increase product quality.
Kensa Heat Pumps Ltd.
Project title: Highly Flexible Storage Heat Pump (HFSHP)
BEIS Grant Value: £1,233,117.39
Project partners: MTC, PNDC University of Strathclyde
This project aims to combine electrically-driven heat pumps with heat storing batteries to shift heat production from times of peak electrical demand on the National Grid, enabling consumers to charge heating systems to store lower cost and lower carbon heat in anticipation of their peak heating demand. This is achieved by decoupling the times of heating demand in the property from the time of electrical heat production and will help accelerate the technology to the market to make it productionised and affordable in a shorter time-scale. By shifting energy demands, the project also aims to negate some of the challenges faced by the grid from electrifying and decarbonising heat.
Mixergy Ltd.
Project title: Making Efficient Systems around Heat Pumps (MESH)
BEIS Grant Value: £455,214.60
Project partners: Centrica PLC., Vaillant Group UK Ltd.
Project MESH aims to reduce the lifetime costs of domestic heat pump installation whilst delivering higher system efficiency throughout the year. In turn this will expect to reduce capital and operational costs, ensuring a more seamless installation process and holistic approach to design.
During the project, the team will focus on ground-breaking technologies which reduce installation complexity and elevate the seasonally adjusted Coefficient of Performance of real-world heat pump installations.
Parity Projects Ltd.
Project title: Performance
BEIS Grant Value: £670,708.44
Project partners: London South Bank University, ICAX Ltd., Cambridge Energy, RetrofitWorks
Performance aims to directly address the cost and quality assurance barriers of decarbonising heat in homes, by creating a low-cost cost-effective options analysis and verification protocol to enable the offer of a financially insurable performance guarantee to homeowners and landlords.
The project outcome will be software that integrates existing retrofit supply chain components to ensure improved assurance of design and installation of a suitable package of measures, with a particular focus on managing financial risk.
Q-Bot Ltd.
Project title: Free Heat Pump Home Survey and Design Tool
BEIS Grant Value: £782,664.99
Project partners: None
A Free Heat Pump Home Survey and Design Tool which will help consumers make informed decisions on heat pump installation, ultimately providing a knowledge base to facilitate the national rollout of Heat Pumps. As there are different types of Heat Pumps available with vastly different applicability, thermal output, installation complexity and cost, the tool will help consumers confidently match the heat pump to thermal demand of the house and other specific needs on a case-by-case basis.
RJ Barwick
Project title: Archetypal Heat Pump Retrofit for 175,000 Non-Trads
BEIS Grant Value: £899,000.00
Project partners: None
1 million non-traditional homes in the UK have poor energy performance, putting their occupiers at increased risk of fuel poverty, and presenting a key challenge to standardised energy efficiency measures that typically precede a heat pump installation.
This project will utilise the Energiesprong approach to develop optimum standardised whole house retrofit solutions for four of the most challenging and/or common non-traditional home archetypes across sites in West Kent. The housing stock of West Kent Housing Association & Gravesham Borough Council will be used for these pilots, with selected archetypes that have inherent design complexities, assisting the development of optimum solutions in the future. There is a consistency of non-traditional archetypes across geographic areas, presenting an opportunity for other Kent landlords to join the pilot at a later date. Each house has its own complexities and sharing of practical archetypal retrofit knowledge on ‘hard to treat’ non-traditional homes underpins this project.
Switchee Ltd.
Project title: Digitising the Customer Journey of Heat Pumps in Social Housing
BEIS Grant Value: £468,656.00
Project partners: Leeds Beckett University, Daikin UK
This project aims to produce smart heat pump tools specifically aimed at improving the consumer journey for residents in Social Housing. This is achieved by providing tools and research to overcome the current scaling barriers relating to heat pump acceptance, lack of awareness and consumer behaviour. This will be delivered by:
Allowing remote reading of error warning messages from the heat pump to alert the housing association.
Using heat pump specific metrics including live and historic data. Heat pump specific algorithms will be developed to alert on detected heat pump performance issues i.e. excessive energy consumption.
Offering tailored heat pump advice focused on resident experience.
Empower the housing association to trigger when a new resident has moved into the property so that heat pump advice and educational material can be made available to them.
The MCS Service Company
Project title: EST MCS Heat Pump Consumer Journey
BEIS Grant Value: £229,644.00
Project partners: Energy Saving Trust Ltd
Energy Saving Trust and MCS propose to develop a new consumer journey for heat pumps, guiding consumers from their first engagement through to receiving quotes for installation. The journey will build a technology selection tool based on the existing, tried and tested solution provided through Home Energy Scotland to assess a property’s suitability for a heat pump. This will be linked to an enhanced version of the MCS ‘find a contractor’ tool to allow consumers to request installation quotes from installers. Headlined with the Energy Savings Trust and MCS brands the tool will allow for maximum consumer accessibility.
The project will seek an assessment partner, , to increase the accuracy and dependability of the home information data. The intention being to provide multiple installers with sufficient information to quote to 90% accuracy, without the need for several pre-quote site surveys, whilst still complying with MCS standards.
Thermoelectric Conversion Systems Ltd
Project title: Two stage heat pump with greywater energy recovery
BEIS Grant Value: £574,108.00
Project partners: None
This project aims to overcome several major infrastructural challenges of heat pump adoption, by harnessing demand-side management to cope with peak loads and time-shifting energy use. By utilising otherwise wasted energy, this solution aims to give economic and reliable products for retrofit in existing homes and new-build properties to dramatically improve energy efficiency of buildings and cut running costs. This will be achieved by:
- Drawing energy from the household wastewater stream by re-using energy lost, e.g. from the shower or bath, by fitting the heat pump in the drainage system to recover energy stored in a hot water cylinder.
- Using a small air source heat pump to ‘top up’ the hot water tank temperature to provide the domestic hot water supply.
- Operating both heat pumps from a mains plug.
- Using a smart controller to manage both heat pumps and integrate with demand-side management systems to ensure sufficient hot water and heat are available.
Thormer Solutions Ltd
Project title: Total Heat-Pump Installation Solution (THIS)
BEIS Grant Value: £1,595,738.00
Project partners: None
‘THIS’ is an all-encompassing integrated software package and app for installers to streamline the survey, installation and commissioning processes required when installing a heat pump. Thormer Solutions Ltd is born from two industry experts. The project is led by Griff Thomas of GTEC Training Ltd and Paul Harmer of Inventive Software Ltd.
‘THIS’ will provide a digital survey platform and a fully automated design facility, it allows the system to be optimised from the beginning and uses augmented reality to provide the consumer with an upfront feel for how the system and components will look and sound when installed.
The platform will also ensure that all documentation is stored and logged against the installation, there will be full traceability for consumers and installers to access in the future when it comes to heat pump maintenance and service.
Overall ‘THIS’ will aim to streamline the installation process, significantly reducing the time and effort it takes to complete any installation.
Ventive
Project title: Modular Heat Pumps for Cell Based Microfactory Assembly
BEIS Grant Value: £1,498,600.00
Project partners: QM-Systems Ltd, Clear Blue Energy Ltd
Ventive are designing a modular Heat Pump that will provide significant cost and CO2 savings across the installation, operation and production phases.
Ventive Home Heat Pumps are demand responsive, fully integrated Indoor Environment Control systems providing integrated ventilation, heating, and hot water with free summer cooling. The Heat Pump will arrive pre-plumbed and pre-configured with monitoring and renewable energy storage to enable quick and simple installation.
Since each home is different (size, heat loss, thermal mass, occupancy, user behaviour), Ventive will use an array of integrated sensors to assess the indoor environment and adapt the performance of each system, learning and optimising its operation to drive improvements in energy efficiency, energy storage and load shifting capacity.
VIA Analytics
Project title: Heat Pathway
BEIS Grant Value: £218,287.60
Project partners: Daedalus Environmental Limited
Heat Pathway is a software project aimed at improving the customer journey. Significant barriers need to be overcome at a household level to accelerate adoption of Heat Pumps technology and to meet the target of 600,000 system installations per year by 2028. These include costs, understanding of the technology, and appreciation of the long-term benefits (financial and environmental).
The project aims to help meet the 600,000 per year target by developing an online property level analytics platform – Heat Pathway – that enables end to end management of the customer journey, particularly through:
- Identification of suitable opportunities for domestic heat pump installations (and benefits) through digital customer engagement;
- Providing a platform that brings the customers and supply chain together in an efficient, optimised, digitally driven way.
- Developing a framework to provide accurate data management of engagement, installation, and post completion – with the objective of increasing investor confidence, to promote accelerated investment into heat pumps technology.
Wondrwall Ltd.
Project title: Intelligent airsourcing to net zero
BEIS Grant Value: £452,292.00
Project partners: Daikin Air Conditioning UK Ltd
This project aims to overcome the key technical barriers to integration and energy performance optimisation, reduce running costs of heat pumps, and more broadly support improved end-user experiences and acceptance of these systems. This will be achieved by optimising energy management to provide a platform that underpins advanced time-shifting strategies alongside proprietary artificial software intelligence software, using machine learning for dynamic predictive modelling of energy requirements based on their patented sensing technologies.
