@jeff Im a great believer in nudges. If the price of electricity was lowered to more closely reflect its production costs, that would be all the incentive needed to get a lot of people to switch.

Means testing is expensive to do, unless some existing system is used to piggy back it, like the winter fuel allowance using pension credit.

@bontwoody I’ve heard various mutterings about ‘the price of electricity should be lowered to be on a par with gas’, what I am unaware of is any concrete moves to bring this desirable state into existence. I have heard that Gregg Jackson amongst others has suggested out loud that this situation should be brought about too. Does anyone know of any attempts or progress being made to bring this about - I mean, anyone would think we have been in election turmoil or summat! Regards, Toodles.

@toodles - the majority of objections to the existing charges are based on the way in which the 'social obligation' is only levied on electricity, not gas.

The Social Obligations form a sizeable component of the Daily Standing Charge.
Within those Obligations are monies which the Energy Suppliers must direct towards:

• funds to upgrade existing housing stock to higher levels of insulation (normally administered by local government)
• innovation funding to develop technologies required for the future grid
• subsidies (typically £150 /year) for households in energy poverty
• other environmental projects to meet targets agreed with Ofgem

These artificially increase the price of electricity.

Moving them to be levied on gas is a better fit for the ideal of meeting Net Zero CO2 emissions.
But it's complicated by

• fewer households have any mains gas
• there are a large number of small towns and villages where the mains gas supply was provided by a commercial company who now 'own' that part of the network. Those customers can't access the range of competing suppliers' tariffs which most of us can

If you're really eager to get bogged down in a contentious issue, then this is a good one to tackle...
... preferably on a separate topic!

@transparent Thank you Transparent, for now, I think I will leave the likes of Gregg Jackson to start tackling this topic! Regards, Toodles.

There's standards and then there's standards, in order of precedence:

Legislative, European/international/British, trade/industry codes of practice, OEM guidelines

It depends at what level new standards come in, and what clout they have (i.e.: legal) as to their efficacy. The MCS codes and standards are very much a means to an end for MCS, in other words, "you follow our standards and installation method or we won't provide you with MCS certification or the tick-in-the-box needed for the BUS grant". MCS standards have some good content, and some bad, but whether the MCS system as a whole works, and is fit for purpose, is another matter. MCS020 for acoustics is overly simplistic and often leads to incorrect acoustic assessments of ASHPs. It has no standing so far as LA Planning and Noise Enforcement is concerned. A system compliant to MCS020 may still be deemed a statutory noise nuisance and be slapped with an abatement notice. What then is the point of MCS020 other than pure tick-box?

A new standard and method would be welcome, and is needed, not least to quantify and highlight the performance gap that exists between optimised SCOPs in MCS estimations based on OEM 'test bed' data, and actual SCOPs due to real world hydronic system constraints. The gap is largely unavoidable in retrofit applications, but nothing exists to quantify it and determine what is a realistic expectation of 'theoretical' vs 'actual' performance. Without such a standard and method, accurate estimates of energy consumption and running costs for heat pumps cannot be predicted. The MCS performance estimate will be optimistic, and in most cases, not achieved. There are a few companies and installers competent to give their own accurate performance estimates, and even performance guarantees, such as Heat Geek accredited installers. Many will simply rely on [hide behind] the MCS performance estimate, which often misleads the homeowner.

In the Solar PV sector, new standard PAS 63100:2024, issued by the BSI in March 2024 came out. It took some of the industry rather by surprise. It has some pretty far reaching requirements concerning BESS location and safety requirements. Even though it is published by the BSI, it is not legislative, and therefore not mandatory. Followed to the letter, the recommendations in PAS 63100 incur substantial additional cost for installers and may preclude the installation of BESS in some homes. As a result, some of the industry has kicked back, unsurprisingly. It will be interesting to see what codes & standards and even alternative certification methods appear for ASHP installations in particular and how the industry receives them.