@majordennisbloodnok, As you may well remember, I had a Homely smart controller installed in late 2023; I had not seen any of the ‘up to’ savings or other claims at that time. I decided to install Homely for simplicity of operation knowing that my wife could keep warm without worries were I to submit to the wheels of the No:49 bus. I later came across the claims but have made no attempt to evaluate their voracity. As with many products, high pressure sales techniques seem to be rife in the heat pump industry ☹️ Lies, damn lies, statistics and sales patter! I just hope that our Homely is doing a good job - despite the puff!

As to the efficiency claims … well as you imply, the specifics are not shared with us. I would appreciate more openness with consumers rather than the (to me at least) very short sighted attitude that the user doesn’t need to know and if they did, they may well make a mess of things!

Your Point 3:

Some months ago, I received an email from Homely with a questionnaire in which they wished to know what kit Homely users had in their armoury apart from a heat pump. There were tick boxes for solar, battery storage etc. and what tariff and so on, they explained that they were considering further research into integration of kit; I will be interested in any subsequent developments. Regards, Toodles.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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Digging a little deeper, I found the Homely study was carried out over two 24-hour periods with and without Homely. I'm not sure whether that means two days with and two days without or two days in total but we've all seen how much heat pump performance can vary across a whole year so I'd suggest the study is great as a first pass indicator but far too limited to form a basis for any real world claims.

An important point, two 24 hour periods is far too short a time frame, all the more so since, as I understand it, Homely has to 'learn' the house/heat pump characteristics to do it's thing. Or maybe it is a fast learner?

Absolutely, @toodles.

I remember seeing (and commenting on) something in their website a year ago or more that said they wanted to widen the scope beyond heat pumps. It’s exactly what I expected would tick the right boxes for you, wanting a managed service rather than a bespoke setup. I’m pleased they’ve moved forward enough to start asking customers but I’ll wait for something more tangible before forming an opinion. It could be just what the market needs; it could be all style and no substance.

As for whether your installation is providing value, I’d say only you can decide and your many posts about them clearly show you believe it works for you and your situation. You have real information on which to base that, so I reckon that’s informed choice in action.

I’ve been very careful not to comment on the service’s actual fitness for purpose, especially since even if only Salford University’s own estimates are reasonably accurate then the service may well be cost effective. Your point about high pressure (and potentially, in my opinion, downright misleading) sales tactics is precisely why I started the thread. This forum helps protect homeowners through free availability of information, so I decided to turn over a rock, shine the metaphorical torch and let everyone else make their own minds up about what they could now see more clearly.

Posted by: @cathoderay

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Or maybe it is a fast learner?

It has been known, but does seem suspicious to me. Once again, though, there is a lack of real data or information to allow for a reasoned conclusion to be drawn.

I think each of these offerings have their own specific target markets, with each providing something different to the other, so they're not obvious candidates to be compared directly to each other.  Each, in their own way, are attempting to offer solutions where the heat pump manufacturers themselves have fallen short with regard to user requirements.

I can't speak with any knowledge for Homely as it's something I've never used, and never considered using, as it required a hardware installation.  I have used both Havenwise and MelPump extensively to provide some thoughts on those.

To me, Havenwise offers a solution to those moving from gas boiler systems and who are never likely to be interested in setting weather curves or looking in detail at how their heat pump is performing.  It gives them a logical control interface based on timed settings for heating and hot water, with the option of linking this to an energy tariff should the user wish, and then runs the system to those requirements behind the scenes for them.  The algorithms will likely do so in an efficient way, but it's debatable as to whether they will be optimal settings compared to someone who's prepared to invest time and effort into getting the system to run as efficiently as possible.  This will likely be a very small subset of heat pump users so, in most user cases, they're getting a 'set and forget' system that is easily understood and which will likely address all sorts of issues arising from sub-standard commissioning.  The user gets some basic reporting back from this, including a running COP total.  The user can sign up to it for free and run an initial 3 month trial of it (longer than the 1 month trial when I signed up) before deciding whether the £60 annual subscription is worth taking up, so there's plenty of scope to assess it risk-free.  There's also a very responsive customer support service available, if needed, which is probably an improvement on many manufacturer standard options in this regard.  For heat pump owners with an eligible system to use it, I think Havenwise can provide a good overall 'comfort blanket', particularly for new heat pump users, as I was when I first started using it.

I think I'm likely to be in a very small minority of Havenwise users where the data offering provided didn't deliver enough detail for me, albeit this can be addressed by requesting access to installer level reporting, which is a big improvement, and in an even smaller minority who will want to understand what it's actually delivering and then trying to assess if there are better options available.  In a way, within the space of around 8 months, I've evolved naturally away from being a natural Havenwise user, albeit I still use it currently for DHW operation having switched away from the heating option.

As you've noted, the Havenwise marketing strategy has evolved somewhat in its messaging, and I believe that Henri has posted on here about the challenges of such.  The savings available from it are very much around improving native heat pump operation, but the marketing referenced savings vs a gas boiler system.  More recently the marketing has shifted towards additional services that are now being offered, such as assessing installations via a site visit, so there's clearly an evolution going on within the business to provide a wider service, and these have been the bulk of the adverstising that now pops up on my Facebook feed.  My views relate to the basic £60 software solution to get a system to run more efficiently, and I still think this has merit overall.

MelPump is something entirely different again, and is marketed primarily as a £26pa reporting solution for Mitsubishi users, with a 1 month free trial option available.  In this sense alone it's a huge upgrade on MelCloud that might well be worth the subscription cost to many for that alone.  What isn't initially clear, and only becomes apparent with use is that it is capable of being much more than this, and can essentially be set up to run your system in various ways, so is potentially an alternative to Havenwise.  However, doing so is a less 'hand-held' route than via Havenwise so is more suited to the 'system tweakers' than the 'set and forget' users, so which one is preferable depends entirely on the individual user.

There's then another level of integration available within MelPump via the optional dongle, which is a fantastic additional to those brave enough to try it.  Not everyone will be comfortable in undertaking the setup process, which will be daunting to many people.  Beyond this, it also becomes clear that the dongle itself doesn't require Mel Pump as there's the option to use it exclusively via Home Assistant, but the Mel Pump interface is much simpler to use for most people.

Ultimately, what Mel Pump offers is a reporting solution, which the potential to do much, much more than this if a user wishes to put the effort in to do so.  This is very different to the basic Havenwise offering and there are distinct subsets of users who will prefer one over the other.  It's also something that is only available to Mitsubishi users, so isn't a viable alternative to Vaillant or Samsung users.

Which brings us back to Homely, which offers 'something' to the large subset of heat pump users who don't have the option of either MelPump or Havenwise.  Whether that 'something' is of benefit is not something I have any knowledge of, and the feedback from reading the forum posts appears to be mixed.

What is very clear is that there are a whole host of users for whom none of these systems are an option and the fundamental blame for that lies with the manufacturers not providing robust, user-friendly system reporting as a standard part of their heat-pump systems and, in the absence of such, users will look to find whatever solutions are available to them.

In some ways, @sheriff-fatman, my inclusion of Melpump was to show there is another way; that a company can successfully fulfil a need without making inflated claims. @toodles is right - it is rife in the industry but I see no reason why it has to be.

@cathoderay Homely suggest that it takes about a week for the learning process to complete. Toodles.

Posted by: @majordennisbloodnok

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In some ways, @sheriff-fatman, my inclusion of Melpump was to show there is another way; that a company can successfully fulfil a need without making inflated claims. @toodles is right - it is rife in the industry but I see no reason why it has to be.

I struggle with the concept of being overly critical of a product where there is a genuine commitment-free extensive trial period available, and the 3 month one from Havenwise is exactly that.  There's no requirement to provide payment card details in the hope that you forget to cancel, as you see used extensively elsewhere.

Regardless of any advertising claim made, anyone choosing to switch on to the paid Havenwise subscription will have done so after using the system for a meaningful length of time, and it's this experience that will ultimately drive their decision process.  They're willing to have their product given full user scrutiny, which is as much as anyone could reasonably ask prior to a purchase decision.

It's why I would put it in a different category to Homely, where there is an up-front commitment requirement prior to seeing how the system performs.

Posted by: @toodles

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Homely suggest that it takes about a week for the learning process to complete. Toodles.

Thanks. It does rather beg the question of how it managed to learn so fast in the Salford trial... I haven't been able to find any published data on the trial beyond Homely's blog post, and an even briefer mention on the University of Salford's pages, more news letter / press release than anything else (both of which the Major also found).    

That’s a fair and valid point, @sheriff-fatman.

Whilst I’ve been careful to distinguish between criticism of claims and criticism of the products themselves, you’re right that the overall marketing of these services is more than just the claims themselves.

Terry Pratchett wrote in “The Light Fantastic” of a Patrician legislating against the excesses of hyperbole, saying that

..any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne

I must admit I have sympathy for that approach.

@cathoderay I suppose that it is not impossible that the Homely trial was conducted AFTER the smart controller had had access to the system for a period of time so that it had ‘learnt’ the requirements previous to commencement of the trial? Toodles.