Posted by: @alec-morrow

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Unfortunately, the UK government is now planning to remove certain “Class 2” controls from the market by 2026. This reflects a troubling disconnect between policy and technology. A heat pump without its proprietary controller is like a car without a gearbox – it simply doesn’t function as intended.

I agree that the UK heating industry is well behind the curve, which accounts in part for the poor heat pump installations that plague this site.  The products appear generally to be OK, but our embedded installation practices and customer expectations (which are in part a result of many years of poor installation practice) aren't.  

Referring to your specific assertion can you provide a source for this information please.  If it is true it is indeed serious, serious enough to make a serious fuss about.  

My impression is that much government policy has, at least under the previous administration (its too early to comment on the present), been 'led' by the industry.  I cant see why the industry would be requesting this.

Is this the document?  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/raising-product-standards-for-space-heating-policy-proposals/raising-product-standards-for-space-heating-policy-proposals

Class II and Class III controls are weather compensator controls, however, only utilise an external sensor as compared to controls in higher classes, which use a combination of external and room sensors to determine heat demand. Class II and III controls are not commonly used within the UK so removing these classes is not expected to have a significant impact.

@jancold I tend to agree with your analysis 

The summary says this:

• Class I – A room thermostat that controls the on/off operation of a heater
• Class II – A heater flow temperature control for use with modulating heaters
• Class III – A heater flow temperature control, for use with on/off output heaters, using weather compensation
• Class IV – An electronic TPI room thermostat, for use with on/off output heaters
• Class V – A load compensator, modulating the temperature and/or boiler output, maximising condensing mode
• Class VI – A heater flow temperature control including a weather compensator and room temperature sensor, for use with modulating heaters
• Class VII – A heater flow temperature control including a weather compensator and room sensor, for use with on/off output heaters
• Class VIII – Multi-sensor room temperature control, for use with modulating heaters

The government proposes to raise GB product requirements so that temperature control Classes I-III will no longer be sufficient from mid-2026 i.e. they will not be able to be placed on the market for use with boilers or any other heating system or appliance type. This will ensure that all heating system controls provide the highest possible energy efficiency benefit.

Prima facie all this seems to do is to prohibit control where weather compensation is the only available control.  SOFAIK most if not all heat pumps also feature some sort of temperature sensor which can be used to supplement the WC if you wish, and the proposed new part L building regulations still require TRVs (albeit that they say that the heat pump native controller must be the primary control).

Cant see the problem but perhaps @alec-morrow can explain which heat pumps this will outlaw?

All that run on weather guidance only, with no indoor reference

The broader point is obviously that if regs don’t support the technology manufacturers are unlikely to treat us anything other that a sales market for exploitation 

which is where we are now

Posted by: @alec-morrow

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All that run on weather guidance only, with no indoor reference

 

Which are... Is there even a heat pump available that either doesnt have an internal IAT sensor or cant take an external thermostat input as a limit switch. 

To my certain knowledge Mitsubishi, Vaillant, Samsung, Midea and clones all feature internal room temp sensors and Im pretty sure Panasonic and LG also. 

Which, if any, don't?

@jamespa I suspect they too can be run without indoor sensing, but I don’t know.

my point is that those who write the regulations dont  understand the technology.

Posted by: @alec-morrow

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@jamespa I suspect they too can be run without indoor sensing, but I don’t know.

my point is that those who write the regulations dont understand the technology.

 

 

They definitely can be run on pure WC, and arguably its the best method (albeit probably using a temperature sensor as a limiter).  However they have the additional features so are not excluded from the market.

Taking this one step further, do the proposed regulations prohibit them from being run on pure WC, or do they only require that the product has the additional features.  This is an important difference and the summary on the website says the latter.

Thus, if the text of the website is correct, the only products which are affected so far as I can see are those which have no indoor sensor at all.  I come back to the question, is there even such a product?  I think its possible that you jumping to conclusions which go beyond what the consultation appears to say.

More significant, it seems to me, is this

"‘Open protocols’ are a communication protocol which enables all relevant heating system components, including those made by different manufacturers, to be capable of communicating. This must include enabling heating controls to modulate/adjust the flow temperature of a space heater to maintain the temperature heating system rather than solely maintaining a set point temperature by switching the space heater on and off."

Most heat pump manufacturers use Modbus, but a few, notably Vaillant, use ebus.  Vaillant (and others which use it) will doubtless claim that the protocol is in fact open, in the sense that it is disclosed, albeit adopted by few manufacturers.  TBH this one should have been mandated by the EU a decade or more ago IMHO.  I haven't checked if the EU has done or is proposing to do so, but its definitely the sort of thing the EU does and hopefully will.

It disentir take much to force the paradigm shift required in our industry. Germany mandated an outdoor sensor in 1986, Holland OT in 2005

UK  regulation don’t  force change and just muddy the waters.

banning class 2 just confirms this it’s switchable in the controllers

all a missed opportunity that started well banning class 1

Posted by: @alec-morrow

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It disentir take much to force the paradigm shift required in our industry. Germany mandated an outdoor sensor in 1986, Holland OT in 2005

 

I agree with the inference from this comment, namely that weather compensation has been mandated elsewhere for many decades.  We didn't which, IMHO, was a mistake.  The result has been a 10% increase (for many people) in the costs of running our boilers, reduced comfort, and a much more difficult transition to heat pumps

Posted by: @alec-morrow

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UK  regulation don’t  force change and just muddy the waters.

Unfortunately few of our politicians are engineers/scientists and there has been a consistent push for several decades to dumb down/outsource the functions of the Civil Service in the name of efficiency/tax cutting, so I doubt that we have much capacity for regulation without the 'support' of the industry.  The unavoidable consequence of this is regulation which, at least to a significant extent, is by the industry for the industry. 

Unless we are prepared to invest properly in our civil servants (which means accepting that they must have capacity and be at least as good, probably better, than their industry counterparts - and remunerated accordingly), the outcome is inevitable.  Unfortunately (IMHO) the British public, and much of the media, appear to have preferred a different approach for most of the past 40 years, generally trashing the very people that are needed to make regulation work for the public, not for the industry.  In the end they got/get what they paid (or voted) for.  We also outsourced much regulation to the EU and must now insource it again, putting an additional strain on resources.

DESNZ is particularly keen on developing new standards for Heat Pumps and other Energy Smart Appliances (ESAs) at the moment.

In April'24 they opened the second stage of their consultation on Delivering a Smart and Secure Electricity System (sub-titled Implementation).
The first stage was done in 2022 under the auspices of BEIS, as DESNZ was yet born and we lived blissfully unaware of the regulations lurking in the depths of civil servants' minds.

Section 1 of the Consultation concerned ESAs and had 58 technical questions.

It was almost entirely built on the concept of there being a super new government database and software system to allow 3rd parties to remotely control Heat Pumps in the home.

This is a strategy called Demand Side Response, based on the theory that we are going to reach a situation where electricity demand outstrips supply.
No actual evidence for the hypothesis was presented, and it conflicts with the actions of National Grid ESO (and now NESO) to facilitate grid connections for generation and storage well beyond the predicted demands as we progress towards Net Zero.

Nevertheless, Government intends creating panels of experts who will define the required regulatory framework for

• licensing access to the ESA database
• stipulating who is responsible for which parts of the system
• a mechanism for consumers to opt-in; whereby they receive financial compensation when their heat-pump gets turned off
• a secure encryption system through commands get sent to some sort of decoder in our homes

This will be known as PAS-1878
1878 is coincidentally the year when electric street lighting was first installed in London.

Their level of confidence is sufficiently high that they intend creating all this into a new BS Standard, which will be offered to other countries as a template for a new International Standard.

So that just leaves DESNZ with the minor technical stuff of creating an open protocol which will be universally acceptable to all the ASHP manufacturers of the world,
and then selling the idea to us consumers, who will be falling over ourselves to have our domestic heating controlled by a licensed DSR-Agent.

What could possibly go wrong?

I guess, but it is only a guess, that the excess demand problem is as much, if not more, in the grid equivalent of the 'last mile' as it is in generation/transmission.  Although building a power station is difficult, it's surely easier than upgrading the vast distances of local cable and transformers.  Maybe I'm wrong, but if not then it's entirely possible that the grid has excess offers of connection, but there's still a capacity problem.

To me demand management is an alternative to infrastructure investment, and in principle a sensible one at that.  Projecting forwards to when the problem manifests, each household will have around 100kWh of storage in the form of EVs and the house fabric.  Not to use that in some way to reduce the need for infrastructure build out seems madness and unnecessary cost.

So to my mind the question is 'how'.  That's not saying the government proposal is right, but I can't help believe we need something of the kind.

I stress I don't have the facts about capacity so could be wrong.