Posted by: @springswood

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Frankly I still don't understand why our electricity is so expensive. Still, that fact that other European countries don't have such a big difference between gas and electricity suggests it's down to policy and not engineering constraints.

It is a politically motivated myth that our electricity prices are vastly more expensive than the EU.  We are certainly amongst the more expensive (#6 out of 40), but not dissimilar to other large countries in the west of the continent; Germany, Ireland and Austria are all more expensive.  Even France, with its abundant nuclear power, is only 20% less expensive.

Our gas prices on the other hand are somewhat cheaper than our large neighbours, for example we are nearly 40% cheaper than France.  

Taken together that makes a big difference to gas/electricity ratio.

Here  is a good representation of both, figures from Eurostat which is the EU statistics body.  There are some insights here as to the differences.

And then you look at US electricity prices and weep.

Looking at it another way, do we think heat pump installers are making massive profits? I don't think so. If they were, surely it wouldn't be so hard to find them? They'd all be piling onto the training courses, getting MCS certified, and pushing heat pumps at you wherever you go.

Like solar installers these days. Everyone is pushing solar now, presumably because there are high margins in it. I don't see the same for heat pumps, so presumably the margins -- and therefore the quotes -- aren't excessive.

Another thing for the "list of costs" is the capitalised cost of all the equipment and training that goes into running a heat pump installer vs a gas boiler installer.

Posted by: @springswood 

I confess to becoming a little triggered by mention of dunkelflaute. It's not as worrying as it at first seems. This is explained a lot better then I could on the YouTube channel of Prof Gio here The Genius Trap of "What if the wind doesn't blow". And he is a professor, of control engineering at Imperial College.

There is good material in that YouTube video; however, nearly all of the points made address how we can deal with a shortfall of output from renewables over a time period which is measured in hours up to a day rather than a week or more. At times 12:50 and 17:50 in the video there is mention of a longer duration being economically very expensive to solve.

At 21:40 the video talks about aggregating the output of many renewable generators being like coin flips where statistics, specifically the law of large numbers dictates that the number of heads or tails will be very close to the average. Unfortunately, unlike coin flips, renewable generators do not behave independently in the statistical meaning of the word. This completely undermines the argument - it is incorrect and simple does not apply in this case. Rather, the weather in the UK is highly dependent across one part of the country to another. It is easily possible under high pressure conditions to get very little wind generation from a very large number of wind generators all at the same time. We can see this unfortunate reality in the recorded outputs. See https://www.energydashboard.co.uk/historical for the 90 day period starting 1st Oct 2025 and look at the total solar and wind output for Oct 12th to 17th 2025.

It is not impossible to develop technology to address the supply issues caused by this type of weather pattern; however, it is expensive to do so. Demand response is not a comprehensive answer over this time frame, for example reducing the state of charge of EV batteries in the evening to smooth out peak demand is achievable and starting to happen provided that they are charged again over night, but doing the same over a 3-4 day period before recharging is perhaps a stretch. Building sufficient pumped hydro or compressed gas systems to handle this type of supply issue is expensive and the number of sites suitable for the former is limited in the UK.

I particularly liked the bit in the video about Brandolini's law and how much more explanation it takes to fully rebuff a simple falsity. (The point above about statistical independence is one of those).

Posted by: @rob-of-york

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Brandolini's law and how much more explanation it takes to fully rebuff a simple falsity

This just might need a rebuttal (possibly marginally more civilised that a rebuff) of its own. Though the original source is not clear, the idea has been flying around the world around for centuries, with alleged sources ranging from Mark Twain to Winston Churchill, while those who would determine the origin are still putting their boots on. The earliest published reference to the idea is probably from Jonathan Swift in 1710, when Brandolini wasn't even a twinkle in his great great grandparent's eyes: "Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it". See the various possible sources/quotes here.

On the subject of pricing of UK heat pumps, I filmed one of the most interesting podcast episodes we’ve done this year with JT Stewart (he's the lead chair of the US Heat Pump Summit), looking at heat pumps from an American perspective.

The cost of US installations genuinely surprised me, particularly when you consider that their market is dominated by air-to-air systems. I don’t want to give too much away before the episode is released, but it’s remarkable how widely costs vary and how different the American sales process can be from what we experience in the UK.

The transatlantic comparison was absolutely fascinating. Episode drops on Wednesday.

@editor 

I look forward to watching the podcast. 

The comparison with our neighbours in Europe is an interesting one. There is an excellent article here:

https://heatpumpswatch.org/heat-pump-installation-costs-germany-vs-europe/

The UK is far from the most expensive.

I hope our Govt. doesn't take a lead from their German counterparts and require that all heat pumps over 4.2kW are able to be throttled back to that level by the grid operator to avoid overloads...

Posted by: @scrchngwsl

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Looking at it another way, do we think heat pump installers are making massive profits? I don't think so. If they were, surely it wouldn't be so hard to find them? They'd all be piling onto the training courses, getting MCS certified, and pushing heat pumps at you wherever you go.

Like solar installers these days. Everyone is pushing solar now, presumably because there are high margins in it. I don't see the same for heat pumps, so presumably the margins -- and therefore the quotes -- aren't excessive.

It is clearly difficult to say, there must be cases where good work and efficient sales processes are leading to good return, which is not a bad thing. 

And yes, solar installs must be a lot more profitable, given the equipment cost dropped significantly.