Posted by: @old_scientist

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Where does the heat pump market go from here? How does it continue to build momentum?

 

Personally I don't think it can until it reinvents itself completely.  Currently it's designed like a bespoke tailoring service with every install requiring a master tailor.and a vast lead time,  not a mass market produt (with product options that together cover most cases) where the vast majority of installs require only your local plumber.

Octopus and heat geek are both pushing in significant ways on the right buttons but it is going to be slow without determined top- down redesign, which would almost certainly need to be a government initiative because the current industry would perceive the type of redesign needed as a threat.

With only 2.5 years to the next election there is insufficient time to complete this in the current term of government. 

The ‘Warm Homes Plan’ was subsequently published in January 2026, which included details of the government’s aim to achieve 450,000 heat pump installations per year by 2030.

I have to say, on current evidence the above does seem like a pipe dream (sorry, couldn't resist!) and completely unachievable (going from current 50k per year to 450k per year in 4 years). Looks more likely the industry may consolidate at a base of around 50k installs per year whilst it figures out how to grow from there. 

Posted by: @old_scientist

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The ‘Warm Homes Plan’ was subsequently published in January 2026, which included details of the government’s aim to achieve 450,000 heat pump installations per year by 2030.

I have to say, on current evidence the above does seem like a pipe dream (sorry, couldn't resist!) and completely unachievable (going from current 50k per year to 450k per year in 4 years). Looks more likely the industry may consolidate at a base of around 50k installs per year whilst it figures out how to grow from there. 

 

IMHO its not unachievable, but it wont be achieved with a linear evolution of the current industry set up.  And I personally don't assume that the industry wants to grow, it may be perfectly happy where it is thank you and certainly may not want to take a risk that its monopoly is disrupted in the hope that growing the market rapidly will in fact bring benefits to all.  Just look at the resistance to plug in solar if you want to see how it reacts to any proposed change in the status quo.

Government probably wont yet have the evidence to force the industry shake up that is needed, but the figures tell me that it must be puzzling over it, as Government clearly genuinely intends to transition to take place.

Government does have the evidence in respect of quality which is why it is consulting on stripping existing bodies of there responsibilities for consumer protection and centralising this in a Government run (as opposed to industry sponsored) body, but I imagine that there will be very strong industry resistance.

Basically my view is that, unless the current priorities extend beyond the next election (which the electorate will determine in the ballot box), the heat pump industry will remain a niche for the foreseeable future.  Whist the people who currently deliver heating (ie your local plumber) are in essence excluded, and whilst control vests in a group with vested interests in preserving a niche monopoly, that is more or less inevitable. 

Alternatively maybe the combined forces of Octopus and Heat Geek together would be enough to break the mould.  They are probably, however,. relatively unhindered by the regulations because they just do a good job and so nobody bothers to check if every irrelevant i has been dotted and t crossed.

@editor 

I think our differences are subtler.  I agree that 25k good installs is better than 200k poor ones.  However I also think that the only way to deliver quality at any volume is to aim for 200k good ones and proactively redesign the process so the installer doesn't to be an expert in everything in order to achieve that.  That involves thinking about it at a higher level than individual installs, and understanding how to reduce it to a set of solution archetypes and steps that any plumber can deal with, with sufficient tolerance to accommodate a realistic installer competence.  Engineering the process not the individual solution.

Put another way scaling and better quality are, approached in the right way, complementary not exclusive, going hand in hand, whereas keeping the numbers small and relying linear evolution of existing processes will do nothing to improve quality, it will just stagnate more or less at current levels.

At the current time octopus and heat geek appear to be 'breaking the mould', albeit in different ways.  More or less everyone else is still stuck with what MCS mandates, which is the bespoke suit offering relying on brilliant tailors.  Unfortunately there aren't enough brilliant tailors to go round and never will be, this approach is doomed to failure IMHO.

To my eyes, sat behind all of this is a basic policy making failure to recognize that we're dealing with heating 'systems' and that if you want to replace/retorfit a fundamental component, the heat-source, then to get a good overall result you have two basic strategies which have their own pros/cons.

One is to fit a replacement heat-source which is either fully or largely compatible with the system, aka a 'drop in replacement' thus ensuring acceptable performance with the rest of the system, keeping the work and cost to the minimum and thus being highly scalable and something which is possible to do in large quantities. This is the way to get hundreds of thousands to millions of units installed each year. The down-side, is the heat-source then needs to be designed around the parameters of the installation - so either a heat-pump running at higher temps, lower flows and less optimal efficiency (fine for countries where electricity is cheap, so not GB) or like the Europeans countries do, using a hybrid heat pump with some residual gas usage to match the parameters of a boiler under coldest weather conditions and provide instant hot water. Or even, use some novel yet to be designed heat pump, designed bottom up purely as a boiler replacement.

Second route, is to fit a heat-source which is incompatible with the rest of the system and then attempt to modify that existing system to make it work with the new heat source. But that approach brings inevitable problems, there's a lot of uncertainty about the existing system as it's buried in the walls/ceiling/floors and often is not fully known, lots of parts need replacing and new bulky items like hot water cylinders need adding. It's costly, disruptive and time consuming which imposes a ceiling on how many people will opt for it, so it won't scale and any roll out will be long and slow.

Britain has opted for retrofit strategy no. 2 while hoping to scale up installations as if it had adopted strategy no. 1, while comparing itself against European countries that have a combinations of cheap electricity, or use hybrids for retrofits. It can't work.

The sale of EVs this year is forecast to be at least 25% up on last year. To my old and simple mind the reason for this is obvious: it is down primarily to the high cost of petrol.

Heat pumps will become the heating of choice when the price of electricity falls to a level where a zero disrupt heat pump replacement can show a significant annual saving over gas - without the need for the homeowner to invest in an EV; PV solar or a battery. 

@l8again Yes, a straightforward price reduction that at least equalised the running cost of renewable energy heating compared to fossil fuels would just start things off as those wishing to go green could afford to do so but if a lower energy cost were possible, this would really start the ball rolling …. but…. how likely is this? 😟Regards, Toodles. (No EV here, but heat pump, solar and battery have been installed).

Posted by: @l8again

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Heat pumps will become the heating of choice when the price of electricity falls to a level where a zero disrupt heat pump replacement can show a significant annual saving over gas - without the need for the homeowner to invest in an EV; PV solar or a battery. 

I think you may find that is the case from Oct or if not from Jan..  The war is pushing up gas more than electricity!  Combined with the vat reduction which applies only to lecvy and shifting some policy costs from leccy to general taxation, the ratio could soon be back where it was in  2011-2013 before the govt started loading policy costs mainly onto electricity this tilting the ratio.

Posted by: @jamespa

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Posted by: @l8again

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Heat pumps will become the heating of choice when the price of electricity falls to a level where a zero disrupt heat pump replacement can show a significant annual saving over gas - without the need for the homeowner to invest in an EV; PV solar or a battery. 

I think you may find that is the case from Oct or if not from Jan..  The war is pushing up gas more than electricity!  Combined with the vat reduction which applies only to lecvy and shifting some policy costs from leccy to general taxation, the ratio could soon be back where it was in  2011-2013.

And even more so for the ~1 million households in England and Wales on heating oil which is currently priced at around 12.2p/kWh here. An oil boiler of 85% efficiency bumps that up to 14.35p/kWh of useful heat, and a SCOP of 4 for a heat pump means electricity priced below 57.4p/kWh is cheaper. With a battery and a heat pump tariff, my running costs are now a quarter of that of the oil boiler it replaced.

@jamespa Sadly, we are still stuck with marginal costing for electricity where the most expensive contribution sets the overall price.