Heat pump scheme take-up ‘lower than anticipated’
Published 29 November 2022
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Fewer households have taken advantage of the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme than anticipated, industry figures have revealed.
The scheme, which has been up and running since April this year, makes grants of up to £5,000 available to households switching from fossil fuel boilers to electric heat pumps. The scheme is designed to help kickstart the development of a UK heat pump market by supporting the installation of around 30,000 of the devices per annum.
However, giving evidence to an inquiry into the scheme by the House of Lords environment and climate change committee last week, Ovo’s commercial development director Mark Robson said uptake had been “lower than anticipated”.
He was backed up by Bean Beanland, director for growth & external affairs at the Heat Pump Federation.
“The uptake is not as good as we would have liked and it is certainly not meeting the average run rate required to deliver 30,000 units a year,” he said, adding that Ofgem had been “ill prepared” at the outset of the scheme but was now “running hard to catch up” with an online portal being launched next month so that installers applying for grants no longer have to do so manually.
Beanland also said smaller installers were being put off from participating in the scheme by delays in reimbursing vouchers.
Octopus Energy head of flexibility Alex Schoch agreed, adding that waiting for tens of thousands of pounds worth of voucher payments presented cash flow challenges for smaller business.
Mike Foster, chief executive of the Energy and Utilities Alliance, called for the introduction of a village-scale trial for heat pumps, similar to that being held to test out the use of hydrogen for home heating.
“It would be a useful exercise to have a heat pump village trial of around 2,000 homes,” he said, adding that “major challenges” surround how to upgrade electricity network to cope with increased demand from heat pumps and electric vehicles.
“We need level playing field amongst all technologies so we know exactly what requirements are going to be.”
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