Air source heat pumps use electricity to help with the heating process. Every pump has its own coefficient of performance (COP) which basically shows how much electricity is consumed in order to deliver a certain amount of heat.
This means that in order for an ASHP to stay financially viable, you will require an electricity tariff that is as low as possible. This is becoming increasingly concerning as it’s getting more and more difficult to find electricity providers in the United Kingdom that offer rates under 15p/kWh. The higher the tariff, the more costly it becomes to heat homes that use heat pumps.
Comparative oil and gas prices are lower than electricity at 15p/kWh. When you start to look at tariff rates above this price point, heating homes and properties can become prohibitively expensive. Let’s take a look at a simple chart to illustrate this, and assume that an average house consumes 1,000kWh to drive its air source heat pump over a cold winter month.
| Fixed Tariff | Cost on 1,000 kWh consumption |
| 14p/kWh | £140 |
| 15/kWh | £150 |
| 16/kWh | £160 |
| 17/kWh | £170 |
| 18/kWh | £180 |
At time of writing this article, we could not find a single electricity provider that offered a rate of 14p/kWh, and the cheapest rates we could find, for the West Midlands, was 15p/kWh. Most tariffs were 17-18p/kWh (and there were many that were over 20p). What makes this significant is that two years ago, you could easily secure a rate of 12-13p/kWh.
Smart meters with agile tariffs are probably the best way forward to use the cheapest rates to heat homes if you can be flexible enough to manoeuvre your way around peak electricity times (16:30-19:30). From our research, even flexible tariffs averaged out at about 15p/kWh during January and February 2021.
Please join the conversation about electricity providers and tariffs on our forums.
All electric cars haha + heat pumps not a chance we don’t have enough capacity to produce the power nor shall we I am thinking of disconnecting heat pump and reconnect my brand new combi which heat pump guys disconnected on a grant it will save you money kidded I was
We live in a housing association bungalow who have taken out the storage heaters and installed an air source pump this week. We have tried speaking to our energy provider EDF to inform them, first of all the lady didn’t know what this heating system was. We explained it to her and she wants our meter changed. We have no gas We are all electric. How do we find a supplier?
It took me a year to get EDF to stop charging me for gas. I had to raise a complaint. But from electric storage heaters to a heat pump, your old tariff will do, although it may be cheaper to choose a tariff that has the same price day and night.