For over 20 years, I’ve been installing some of the finest heating systems in the UK, using world-class technology designed by top manufacturers. By adhering to their design principles rather than UK-specific regulations, I’ve seen how integrated systems – where controls and heating equipment work seamlessly together – can deliver exceptional comfort, reliability and energy efficiency. The results speak for themselves: systems that last decades, lower energy bills and clients who rarely think about their heating because it just works.
Yet, despite the undeniable benefits of properly installed heat pumps and other modern heating solutions, this approach isn’t universal in the UK. The primary reason? Most homeowners, policymakers and even some industry professionals don’t understand what constitutes a good heating system. So let’s define it: the best heating system is one you don’t need to interact with because you’re always comfortable. It should also be reliable and optimise energy usage. Sadly, the UK’s regulations often fail to support these goals.
Early in my career, I realised that the design principles of leading European manufacturers were far superior to the standards imposed by UK policy. While policymakers crafted rules with limited understanding of heating technologies, these manufacturers developed solutions based on real-world performance and user needs. As a result, I prioritised delivering systems that ensured comfort and efficiency, even if it meant ignoring certain local regulations.
The technology I worked with – often imported from Germany – was light-years ahead. For instance, outdoor sensors replaced indoor room sensors, enabling heating systems to dynamically respond to environmental changes. These systems were so well-designed that my customers rarely interacted with them, often commenting on their reduced energy bills and the consistent comfort of their homes.
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.
This lack of understanding isn’t just a domestic issue; it has global implications. Heating manufacturers often tailor their offerings to meet the requirements of local regulations. When faced with a market that doesn’t understand or appreciate their technology, they offer only the bare minimum of support. Why would they invest resources in sharing their broader vision with a country that doesn’t ask for it?
Britain stopped being a leader in heating technology decades ago. We need to recognise this and defer to experts who understand the systems we rely on. By adopting better regulations that align with cutting-edge technologies, we can ensure that British homes enjoy the kind of comfort and efficiency that the rest of Europe has already mastered.
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:
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
It’s kicking the privatisation can a bit further down the road. Like all the other infrastructure in this country we are paying for the years of lack of investment and sheer neglect that funded shareholders.
Grids throughout Europe have varying degrees of catch-up to organise but Britain’s really is the pits thus now we have to rebrand ‘rationing’ as ‘demand management’ and hope no one notices. 🤦🏻♀️
The levels of (quiet) panic among policy-makers are extraordinary while many of the ‘solutions’ come from the plasters-over-measles school of engineering. With incredible levels of incoherence.
The Nordic countries have been mapping their route forward for 30 years. They don’t blink at stiff regulation and state control where necessary, they fund research and they have worked very hard at building consumer clarity and confidence. We’re all mouth and trousers and we’ve got those on back-to-front. The consumer pays with minimal protection.
If you turned my heat pump off for 3 or 4 hours during a winter evening I’d be shivering under a duvet. (I wouldn’t, I’d light the log burner but I’m lucky to have one). My house is not only leaky but like many other houses has floating walls and minimal thermal mass.
Once again, those with the least will have the worst. Those with income/batteries/solar won’t need the (likely) paltry payments for having their electrical power input choked. Those at the bottom of the pile won’t be able to say no.
The locational or zonal pricing idea has possibilities if it incentivises local grids and storage but there’s so many competing financial interests it’s really hard to get any clarity and the money involved is eye watering. We paid multi-millions to NOT use Scotland’s wind energy the other week because of our lack of capacity and this is a frequent situation. The Price is Wrong!
I completely agree we are paying for underinvestment in infrastructure (arguably due to the effects of privatisation) although electrification drives a new level of requirement which previously has not been necessary. But like it or not (personally I don’t), underinvestment is what UK voters more or less consistently vote for and what much of our media consistently campaigns for. As a nation we appear to have a ‘something for nothing’ mentality and want Scandinavian level public services (whether privatised or not) for American level taxes. I suspect its a hang over from the empire when something for nothing was indeed possible, so long as you ignored the horrors we were imposing on others.
That said, demand management remains IMHO sensible. There is little point in engineering our infrastructure for peak demand when, with some financial incentives and very little inconvenience, that demand can be sensibly managed down. Its not just a matter of cost, we are already hearing the drumbeat of moaning (from the sector of the media I refer to above) about pylons in the countryside and that the roll out of heat pumps will (apparently) cause social instability. Infrastructure demand management is anyway nothing new, Economy 7 has been around for decades, rail peak at times of peak demand…
Demand management can take several forms and can, just like Economy 7, be optional. Houses with low thermal mass are not particularly suited to demand management of their heating, but many houses do have a high thermal mass and we are all going to have electric cars in the fullness of time which represent more flexible storage. There isn’t, IMHO, a one size fits all solution, but that’s not a valid reason to dismiss it entirely. Of course, like any ‘policy’ it needs to be crafted to take account the variety of social and other circumstances. Failing to plan, including incorporating demand management if necessary, isn’t a solution, in countries where this has happened, and thus do not have a grid as reliable as ours, the better off resort to generators and the poorer freeze or boil.
When I responded that that DESNZ consultation on Delivering Smart and Secure Electricity System, my first observation about the DSR Proposals was that I wouldn’t have started by using Heat Pumps as an example of why we need to suppress Peak Demand.
Since the foundational concept of a heat pump is that it should operate continuously, it shouldn’t be viewed as a contributor to demand peaks.
It’s therefore of greater concern when the regulatory framework to ‘control’ the future grid is being proposed by civil servants with too little understanding of the underlying science!
Ofgem indicates that it’s aware of the problem.
In last month’s consultation on (Lack of) Innovation in the retail market, they make the following observation in the Appendix:
And in my Submission, I’ve therefore made the following comment
That may not have been well received!
That is indeed the case.
The £60bn Great Grid Upgrade announced by National Grid doesn’t address the “last mile".
By far the most extensive cabling layer on the electricity grid is at the 11kV level which supplies our Local Substations.
But to upgrade that is beyond the financial capability of Britain.
We’re talking HS2 on steroids.
The more obvious solution to reduce Demand Peaks whilst simultaneously avoiding the need to increase grid capacity is to time-slice our use of the network.
We can achieve that by installing storage batteries in the home.
The storage needs to be on the consumer-side of the Smart Meter, rather than attached to the 11kV grid.
Commercial grid-tied batteries have no effect on reducing peak demand.
And I’m going to tag @IanMK13 here because this point is of interest to him due to a local issue.
My ‘hypothesis’ is that it would cost far less to install domestic storage batteries than it would to:
But the dearth of scientific understanding amongst civil servants and ministers means that they probably haven’t seen that possibility.
Yes, I’m reading 😉
I’m very surprised by the assertion that 34% of people claim they know a fair amount about low carbon heating systems. I’m also very sceptical of the relevant present Government’s targets considering they have, so far, only demonstrated their expertise with a stick and not kept any of the carrots. A large proprtion of the electorate will be excluded from this ‘game’ by costs alone.
@Transparent Why do commercial LV grid-tied batteries not reduce peak loading on the grid? I’m having difficulty seeing a business case for such a system which would only serve one neighbourhood sub-station. It would be quite an investment to share across a relatively small number of households. The clear benefit to them would be difficult to justify when, presumably, they would ultimately be the people paying for it.
The electricity distribution network has coped this far with the help of ‘diversity’ of demand. Demand is also being managed by the DNO in the form of approval of new connections, installation of micro-generation, energy storage, heat pump and service fuse rating changes. Is the ‘Big Brother’ DSR proposal necessary? It seems to be overly complex andintroduce a huge potential sercurity risk. Can’t ToU tariffs achieve the same outcome?
No but the house is a storage mechanism which a heat pump can access. All other things being equal using existing storage mechanisms is better than creating new ones. I dont know the timescales of the peaks which need to be covered, my assumption is that there are 9in the time domain) macro peaks (eg from 4-7pm) but perhaps also micro-peaks (during the interval in the cup final). Houses are easily capable of riding out the micro peaks if they are indeed a problem.
I agree. The only question is how. To me V2G is the obvious prime mechanism as it reuses batteries we already have, subject of course to the batteries themselves being capable (ie not degrading materially if they are used this way). However doubtless there is a place for dedicated home batteries also.
Your hypothesis seems very plausible, particularly if we postulate that V2G will become commonplace. Are there any figures?
Of course the industry wont want to do this and, as you say, its unlikely we have civil servants and ministers with the scientific understanding required to challenge a strong view advocated by the industry. As I observe upthread this is, IMHO, the result of 40+ years of underinvestment in/outsourcing of the Civil service and a naive, ideology-driven idea that the private sector will miraculously act in the interests of the nation rather than the interests of the foreign shareholders. However, like it on not, that’s what the UK public voted for and that’s what we, and the rest of the UK public, have to live with.
I should probably add that I am not, and never have been, a Civil Servant but I did spend 14 years as a Local Government officer (following 30 years in engineering) and so have experienced first hand the extent to which politicians who, after all, are not elected for their technical skills, are reliant on the technical skills of officers to inform their decisions. This means that the officers/civil servants need to be more capable than the industry figures by whom they are inevitably lobbied, if truly independent advice is to be given. The fundamental skill is enough knowledge to be able to understand the technical matters, and enough intellect (and guts) to be able to use that understanding rigorously to challenge those with vested interests who will otherwise try to pull wool over eyes with technical gobbledegook, or simply asserting that they know best. Consultation, much beloved of Government at all levels, is essential but absolutely no substitute for in-house critical analysis in with the sole objective of understanding what is in the public interest.
That would be my question too. Of course the database could (presumably) be used in conjunction with a ToU tariff/opt in. Without further detail its difficult to comment.
Is the database etc just a piece of infrastructure rather than an end solution? ToU tarrifs of course already exist based on smart (or indeed stupid) meters, but Im guessing that the infrastructure isnt in place to aggregate the effect of the demand interventions, so true management is not possible other than on a piecemeal basis by individual retailers (which is I suspect cost based not capacity based). Once you start to think about the problem, its actually complex and multi-layered, and my suspicion is that not the layers are not equally developed. Thats of course unless you believe that the grid can be managed on pricing alone, which seems improbable.
The demand from each house is dictated by the actions of its occupants.
If they’re on a ToU Tariff, then the household might alter their demand according to the price in each Half-Hour period.
That, in turn, would be reflected by consumption data held by their Smart Meter… but only in arrears.
A commercial storage battery has no access to that data anyway.
Even the DNO is only permitted to access a sanitised amalgamation of Smart Meter data.
They use that to assess the loading on the local substation transformer
A company wishing to connect a 200A/800kWh 3ph Storage Battery to a local substation may make all sorts of claims about ‘supporting the local grid’.
But without measuring the local 11kV characteristics, they’ll have no idea how to optimise the charge / discharge cycle.
Their intention is make money, rather than assist the grid constraints in the area.
They’ll be buying electricity on the (national) wholesale market when it’s cheap in order to recharge their Battery Electricity Supply System (BESS),
and then exporting it when they can receive the highest profit.
That means the BESS unit(s) must send the electricity across the Distribution Grid twice.
The local householders still make the same demand on the Grid.
It is of no consequence that a portion of that energy has been stored in a BESS unit somewhere close by.
Thanks. The profit motive defeats us again.
Is this beginning to feel like an argument for a nationalised system managed in the interests of the nation? 😀
I think V2G is a potential ingredient.
However the V2G Trial undertaken by Kaluza/OVO 4 years ago could only use Nissen Leaf cars because they have a ChaDEMO connector.
We don’t yet have a V2G Charger which can operate with CSS connectors because they can’t offer DC output.
The Cenex Report of that V2G Trial overlooked all the losses.
DNOs had to limit the charge/discharge levels for some of the trial sites due to excessive phase-imbalances and harmonics.
The great majority of EVs use LiMNC batteries.
Those have a lifetime far shorter than LiFePO4 cells.
So EV owners will be impacted greatly if they use the EV battery to supply the home.
That’s why vehicle finance companies usually forbid the use of an EV with a V2G charger.
V2G is only an option if you own the car outright.
Yes @JamesPa the entirety of the DESNZ and Ofgem innovation and regulatory strategies are based on attracting commercial companies to get involved.
They have naff all understanding of how to achieve Net Zero without a profit motive.
That’s why the ‘Consumer Transformation‘ component in the Future Energy Scenarios is so important.
We can do what Government fails to achieve.
Incorrect implementation of energy-technologies within the supply system can actually do more harm than good.
I think it’s time for a story:
As someone who is considering buying an EV within a few years, I would much prefer to invest in one which supports V2H and V2G given that the vehicle is likely to spend much of its time parked outside my house. I’ve always understood that most of the wear on the lithium chemistry is at the ends of the charge range and charging/discharging in the middle of the range doesn’t cause much wear. Forward scheduling of likely vehicle usage could enable software to manage both the charging and some export while ensuring there’s plenty of juice in the battery ready for the next journey.
On the wider issue of getting surplus generation in Scotland to the demand centres in England, I feel that there’s been insufficient fending off of the NIMBYs in favour of the national interest. Undersea cables are a much more expensive (thus tying up more available capital) and vulnerable way to move power than overground powerlines which I find tend to become part of the scenery once the metal is no longer shiny.
I’ve also been wondering for some years why the government of the day couldn’t sort out the funding/payment mechanisms needed to get one or more of the big Scottish pump-storage schemes built and ready to absorb the surplus wind generation ready for release when there’s a calm period.
Based on this discussion it’s pretty convincing that this can’t work for the nation if run as a business, which of course doesn’t mean that it’s technically silly!
Is it remotely possible that there are things that collectively we need and could have but which don’t make business sense, and thus need to be run on a different basis.
Light bulb moment – that’s why we have government! Who would have thought that?
You’re slightly too late to raise this issue now.
The proposed East Coast Marine Links were open for consultation in 2021-22.
HVDC cable 2 from Peterhead to Drax (Yorkshire) was approved by Ofgem on 15th August’24.
It’s one of three DC Marine cables for the East Coast which must be operational by 2030 in order to hit the target for decarbonisation of the grid.
You can find out a lot more on the HVDC Marine cables from SSEN, who intend using the technology between the mainland and Scottish islands.
As for cost, it will in fact be cheaper than erecting additional Transmission Towers (pylons) through the Scottish lowlands.
Using HVDC (800kV and above) not only reduces losses, but simultaneously overcomes the problem of the Scottish Transmission Grid running at 275kV, rather than 400kV.
I don’t know enough about how commercial BESS sites make their finances work. I’ve spoken to NESO, who tell me that they have no direct control over any generation or storage sites. They have a messaging system which allows them to call for power, or pay to have a generator on standby. It’s up to the Generator to respond to that message, within the terms of their contract.
There are more than 1500 commercial BESS sites in GB now.
The vast majority will be operated remotely. So their communications system is an extremely important part of the design.
Any possibility of BESS being subjected to a hostile cyber-attack must be regarded seriously.
Yes, of course.
A BESS connected at the LV level (440v) is no different to having a new 3ph supply to a commercial building.
But the BESS controls are operated with limited vision.
They will be able to see the voltage of the supply from the (adjacent) substation, but there are no sensors to provide feedback from the far ends of the other Feeds from the same transformer.
Nor is there monitoring on the incoming supply to that transformer at the higher voltage level.
That’s somewhat precarious.
If operating the BESS results in the ‘far-end’ voltages falling outside the accepted range of 216v – 253v, then any inverters or EV-chargers at those homes will disconnect themselves from the grid.
That’s a requirement of their G98 certification.
See the story above!
A DNO may not reserve capacity for such a scenario.
If the point of connection currently has capacity available, then the BESS Applicant will be sent an Offer to Connect.
As we progress further towards Net Zero there will undoubtedly be sites where the substation will be running close to (or beyond) its rated capacity.
The DNO must replace/upgrade transformers and Feed Cables to satisfy that additional demand.
The cost of that comes from increased bills for consumers (in that DNO Licence Region).
That’s a financial reason why Battery Storage is best installed in the home, rather than connected directly to the grid.
It’s also disingenuous for a commercial BESS applicant to suggest that they’re helping the national migration towards renewable generation if they’re recharging during a cheap-rate overnight time-slot.
The after-midnight period is ‘cheap’ because it allows CCGT generation plants to remain in combined cycle at 50% efficiency.
If their output drops too low they enter open-cycle mode at 35-40% efficient.
“within a few years" is a pretty long timeframe within the world of EV development.
The Automated Vehicles Act was passed in May’24. It provides the regulatory basis for UK to leap over Level-3 of autonomous transport, and to allow Level-4 vehicles on the highway by 2026.
Level 4 autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs) are fully self-driving within a geo-fenced area and do not require a human driver to be ready to intervene.
That opens up a wide range of possibilities for hail-on-demand public transport.
Some households may decide to no longer own a vehicle themselves.
Others will own a small EV personally, and hail a larger van if they have goods to collect.
The requirement for home-charging will drop,
as will the need for town-centres to keep parking spaces for static vehicles.
The desire for V2G will become diminished.
I’ve spoken with National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET) about the future electricity demand from EVs.
Even if all cars were to be electric, it would only add 10% additional demand to the grid.
So there is sufficient grid capacity, although obviously not simultaneously!
Locational/nodal pricing and time-slicing are crucial to the future of personalised transport.
I’m fully aware that I’ve just opened a load more questions by responding to your original point like this!
Please feel free to comment further.
The Brave New World of local micro electrical grid management…
not to mention globalised infrastructure. The President of China’s ally North Korea having a fun day at the office…
Be careful what you wish for.