Aira has just announced a new integrated home energy system that combines solar panels, battery storage, inverter and their own heat pump, all linked together through what they call “Aira Intelligence”.

They’re claiming this setup could reduce energy bills by as much as 90%, though obviously that’ll depend on a lot of factors like the home, usage and how well it’s optimised.

It’s quite an ambitious move, and we’re starting to see more companies go down the route of offering complete, all-in-one systems for homeowners with generation, heating and storage all from one brand.

Our full article on what we know so far, here: https://renewableheatinghub.co.uk/aira-launches-integrated-home-energy-system-it-claims-could-cut-household-bills-by-90/

The Guardian is reporting the the BUS is going to be scaled back and only households on low incomes/benefits will be able to claim it.

I'm hoping that our install still goes ahead!

This could devastate the industry (if it goes ahead) as the vast majority of installs must be in reasonably well off households.

This is the story @bash is referring to: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/nov/13/hundreds-of-thousands-to-lose-heat-pump-subsidies-in-reevess-budget-plan

This (the article above) is devastating news, but maybe, just maybe, there’s a sliver of an upside.

According to The Guardian, Rachel Reeves plans to limit heat pump grants so that only lower-income households can access them. In other words, most middle-class homeowners will lose eligibility for the £7,500 BUS subsidy.

The argument, of course, is that the 'well-off' shouldn’t get public money. But that completely misses the point. The grant wasn’t supposed to be a handout, it was meant to make the transition to clean heating faster and smoother for everyone, by encouraging more installations and driving prices down through demand.

The bigger problem? The UK still has no clear benchmark for what a “good” heat pump installation even looks like. Installations that should be efficient are costing homeowners a fortune because of poor design and lack of oversight. We’ve seen hundreds of these cases this year alone.

Now, with the middle class priced out of the transition, what happens next?

Will installation prices fall because the volume rush slows down?

Will this give the industry time to improve design and training standards?

Or will it push the worst installers even deeper into ECO4-style work where quality control is practically non-existent?

It’s hard not to feel that the government move will make things worse before they get better. But maybe, just maybe, a slower, more measured rollout will separate the cowboys from the craftsmen and bring quality back into focus.

Thoughts?

Posted by: @editor

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This (the article above) is devastating news, but maybe, just maybe, there’s a sliver of an upside.

According to The Guardian, Rachel Reeves plans to limit heat pump grants so that only lower-income households can access them. In other words, most middle-class homeowners will lose eligibility for the £7,500 BUS subsidy.

The argument, of course, is that the 'well-off' shouldn’t get public money. But that completely misses the point. The grant wasn’t supposed to be a handout, it was meant to make the transition to clean heating faster and smoother for everyone, by encouraging more installations and driving prices down through demand.

The bigger problem? The UK still has no clear benchmark for what a “good” heat pump installation even looks like. Installations that should be efficient are costing homeowners a fortune because of poor design and lack of oversight. We’ve seen hundreds of these cases this year alone.

Now, with the middle class priced out of the transition, what happens next?

Will installation prices fall because the volume rush slows down?

Will this give the industry time to improve design and training standards?

Or will it push the worst installers even deeper into ECO4-style work where quality control is practically non-existent?

It’s hard not to feel that the government move will make things worse before they get better. But maybe, just maybe, a slower, more measured rollout will separate the cowboys from the craftsmen and bring quality back into focus.

Thoughts?

Realistically I suspect it's a simple issue of the chancellor trying to manufacture savings where she can rather than anything making the amount of logical sense @editor alludes to.

However, that doesn't stop @editor making some valid points. The money set aside for heat pump grants (RHI, BUS, was there another?) has, with retrospect, disproportionately benefited those better able to afford heat pumps anyway. As such, this point was always an inevitability and plenty of people have argued for it to be hastened on. Whilst supposed to drive down prices through demand, we've seen plenty of evidence of the grants instead financing shoddy installations by cowboys seeing a fast buck - certainly not all companies but far too many nonetheless.

I just wish we'd got to this crossroads earlier, but with a sensible plan of how to replace the current system in a managed way so that quality can be improved, those who need help better able to access that assistance and installers and manufacturers alike challenged to do better.

Posted by: @editor

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Thoughts?

Firstly its still speculation so worth only limited time.

If I were in government I would definitely want to look at this.  There are always options for how to spend public money or how to achieve a particular goal.  In this case the goals are (presumably)

• make heating cheaper, particularly for the less well off
• make heating greener  - don't particularly care whether that is for the less well off or the better off, the objective is to reduce our carbon emissions.  Also dont particularly care whether it is by insulation or heat pumps, its the total impact that matters
• grow a competent heat pump industry, which ultimately is essential for the above
• grow a competent insulation retrofit industry (we thought we had one, but apparently not") which ultimately is essential for the above
• win the next election, otherwise its likely game over for all of the above

and of course there is a financial constraint.

These are tricky to achieve at all, let alone to balance within a financial constraint.

What would I do in this situation?  TBH I dont know, and anyone who claims to know (unless they have the full facts to hand) is arguably being rather arrogant.

In terms of what I might be tempted to consider (without knowing if any are possible or would work) it would be a combination of:

1. go hard on new builds because it avoids nugatory work (noting however that you need to decarbonise twice as many 3kW houses to achieve the same carbon reduction as any given number of 6kW houses)
2. try to find a way to reduce electricity prices enough to make heat pumps pay back, provided they are reasonably installed (people with capital will then do it anyway, and its mostly people with capital that are currently installing heat pumps unless its under ECO4)
3. not worry if I lost say 25% of the current heat pump industry, provided it was predominantly the grant chasers
4. possibly commission some study work on insulation retrofits, how to productise them without screwing up (this may of course be known, just not universally practiced)
5. think very carefully about exploiting what Octopus are doing, and about the 'minimum disrupt' approach (whether by heat geek or others) in relation to (2). 
6. think very carefully about the extent that the industry still needs support to grow skills, or whether it can now do so without as much support, and thus its better to direct funds to householders

For example - Cutting grants and simultaneously reducing the electricity/gas price ratio to say what it was in (say) 2011 (which is roughly when the ratio started steadily climbing, for reasons that must surely be political) may reduce prices, trigger innovation by the better installers and the 'big boys' to the point where those who lose grants will still invest because there is a payback whilst excluding the grant harvesters.  However this is a tough ask and may not be possible within the financial constraints.

This could point to a realignment, but its pure speculation as I dont have many facts or many experts to talk to about the effects on industry of various measures.

This is not support for the alleged policy (which remains speculation), just thoughts.

@editor 

I rather suspect that there will be several outcomes;-

1) Installation of ASHPs into the existing housing stock will radically slow down.

2) Installers will be forced to reduce prices resulting in the better installers either downgrading the quality of their installations or giving up altogether.

3) Lower quality installations will result in higher operating costs which will reinforce the media and public perception that heat pumps are both expensive to install and operate, this will do more damage to the market.

Deep joy.

Posted by: @bornagain

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@editor 

I rather suspect that there will be several outcomes;-

1) Installation of ASHPs into the existing housing stock will radically slow down.

2) Installers will be forced to reduce prices resulting in the better installers either downgrading the quality of their installations or giving up altogether.

3) Lower quality installations will result in higher operating costs which will reinforce the media and public perception that heat pumps are both expensive to install and operate, this will do more damage to the market.

Deep joy.

 

This is IMHO too simplistic and possibly based on something of a prejudice that the government 'must' be wrong

When solar panel grants and the FIT tarif were tapered off, prices reduced and I am not aware of any evidence that quality of installation reduced.  Now the heat pump industry probably isnt at the same stage yet, but its also clear that this has to be the ultimate goal, its a question of when and how, not if. 

This needs a more sophisticated analysis to come to any conclusions, which I would venture to suggest nobody here (including me in particular) has the information to do.   So we can and should talk about it, but with due recognition that most of us don't actually know what we are talking about, because we dont have the facts!

Im not supporting the proposition (if it happens), or saying its right, but at the same time until we see what it really is and what else might happen alongside (or in due course), as well as what some of the trade offs were, I don't think we can say its wrong.  Government isnt at all simple, its involves difficult, often impossible, frequently, at least in part, unknowable, trade off and worst of all human beings (although AI would be even worse still).

Sometimes it is of course clear that the Government overall intent is at variance with ones own thoughts.  At the current time I cant see any evidence at all that this is the case for anybody who broadly supports the decarbonisation agenda.   

Posted by: @jamespa

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When solar panel grants and the FIT tarif were tapered off, prices reduced and I am not aware of any evidence that quality of installation reduced

This is very loosely connected, but today’s Public Accounts Committee hearing on ECO4 was brutal: 22,000 to 23,000 external wall insulation jobs are defective. 98% of installations under ECO4 failed.

It’s a trade epidemic out there! 

Posted by: @editor

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Posted by: @jamespa

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When solar panel grants and the FIT tarif were tapered off, prices reduced and I am not aware of any evidence that quality of installation reduced

This is very loosely connected, but today’s Public Accounts Committee hearing on ECO4 was brutal: 22,000 to 23,000 external wall insulation jobs are defective. 98% of installations under ECO4 failed.

It’s a trade epidemic out there! 

Thats really scary if its true.  The question is how, there are 'systems' for EWI from supposedly reputable manufacturers.  Are they faulty, was the onsite work shoddy without the necessary attention to detail, or was the wrong system for the type of property selected?.  Of course the cladding system for Grenfell was also from a 'reputable' manufacturer.

Did anyone see the video of the recently opened bridge in China collapsing.  Now that is really shoddy building that puts things in perspective and shows that the epidemic is not confined to the UK.

Posted by: @jamespa

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Did anyone see the video of the recently opened bridge in China collapsing.  Now that is really shoddy building that puts things in perspective and shows that the epidemic is not confined to the UK.

We have family living around the world. It’s the same old story everywhere. It’s all about making money… little else matters.

Our average cost of the retrofit part of the work is around £6,500 our average cost of the heat pump is £4,700 and our average cost of the paperwork inc IBG is £400, Survey £300

Total average £11,900 for a 3/4 bed home. 

If the Government's aim is the decarbonise our older homes which have the biggest carbon impact then they need to keep some support going! I can imagine ASHP units getting cheaper say to around to £3000 but the installation and labour for the actual retrofit works is likely to stay the same as any savings that can be made there on the retrofit parts and installation is just going to get punched straight in the face by any increased taxes or inflation still running at above 4% in construction. Labour and materials raise all the time and have for years now.

If it happens, removing all the support from the middle market at once will just put the breaks on decarbonisation to older home stocks. The grant is for the retrofit part of the works, once a home has an ASHP compliant system and needs a replacement heat pump in 20 years it will be cheap to do so and just like slinging in combi's, (said tongue in cheek)  

We spent around £60,000 getting top end ASHP compliant, we continue to invest smaller sums to stay compliant and train staff, it takes a while to get that back, if a business plans and invests for a period based on facts and grants announced for say a 5 year plan, don't be surprised if the companies loose confidence and there should be no complaining that productivity is down when its near impossible to long term plan with all the chopping and changing.

All these grants should be tapered down at some point, if they are changing it they should drop it in phases over 3 years so plans can be made to exit if thats the strategy of any company, after all if it causes failures we will be complaining about more people living on the state if they loose their jobs. Seems they are defiantly determined to get unemployment from 5% to 10% the way all the tax and grant changes are going

Lets hope that if change is coming it is tapered.