Regarding the cost of the grant to taxpayers, it would be interesting to look at the rising costs of flooding and storm damage. If the rising trend is extrapolated the cost of global warming will probably rise exponentially, making grant expenditure completely insignificant. rotate. That's before considering the impact of deaths, misery and loss of production.
If the EA hadn't interfered with watercourse maintenance, flooding would largely not have happened. My drainage board failed to regularly cleanse dykes for years before the 2007 event which damaged huge areas in East Yorkshire. Greentard thinking put human deellings at risk, second to bugs and birds nests
Another major cost will be the major fines we face for not honouring our commitment to the Paris agreement. If this helps reach net zero its very good value indeed.
@Chris-hy6jy usa are having a break from giving a sh*t . China are surging forward and will make us all look very outdated in terms of the green revolution.
People should be more worried about the money given to fossil fuel companies for "exploration" and such like, this dwarfs the BUS grant. The £22b of our money which will be given for carbon capture and storage is just a sop to the fossil fuel industry to help them keep extracting fossil fuels, a disgrace. Was there the same complaint about grants for upgrading to a condensing boiler? At least upgrading to a heat pump saves significant carbon. How else would people like to push the move to heat pumps? Just say from 2025 no new gas boilers installed? There'd be more complaints about that. (Actually, no brand-new homes should have had gas supplied for at least a decade, there is no excuse for a new-build having gas).
Agreed. Don't forget the madness with the wind farm industry that are paid by us taxpayers not to generate electricity when there is no demand in the national grid, regardless of how much energy the wind farms can generate in that given period. And a simple building regs change would bring about new home builds adoption of ASHP and solar. Wonder why that has not be implement by any major political party to date......
@@MadAntz970 The lack of investment in the grid is a disgrace, without investment we cannot proceed properly. While Scottish windmills are being turned off, gas fired power stations elsewhere are being paid to turn on (and output carbon) because the grid cannot transfer the power from the wind farms. This shows the folly of having a privately owned national grid, why would they care? They only exist to make money.
@@MentalLentil-ev9jr Agreed. It's the Elephant in the room, and will continue to be kicked into the long grass. Some offshore projects have been slowed down, even though they have consent, as they are waiting for grid interconnection points to be made available.
@@MentalLentil-ev9jr perhaps more than a disgrace, is it perhaps a deliberate reluctance to end fossil fuel generation & high energy prices, by going slowly ???
Thank you for your analysis. I am one of those "early adopters" that you are talking about since I finished installation of an ASHP a couple of months ago I have 2 comments: 1) as you clearly say the amount of labour hours is important, in my case calculated as 3 FT engineers/technicians x 7 days = 21 FT salaries of highly trained persons for the field work only (plus office work which I can't estimate because I can't see). In addition the huge number of items and many dozens of meters of copper pipes needed are also considerable The total price (including Bus was calculated at around 15500 which I find very descent. I have experience of plumbers charging me 4500 for a measly gas boiler installed in a couple of hours approximately 15 years ago, way before the inflation that we are experiencing now.....that is the true gouging.... 2) We shouldn't see ourselves as early adopters. I come from an EU country and I observed that all over europe including cold scandinavian countries the adoption is waaay faster than here That is in essence the meaning of the grant: to accelerate adoption and to provide a descent income to those skilled workers that are transitioning from a defunct fossil industry to the sustainable future
The tax payer pays decommissioning costs for North Sea oil rigs. " cost of decommissioning at £44bn by 2063 - with taxpayers on the hook for at least £14bn in the form of tax rebates." So said the Daily Telegraph last year.
Great, private companies take profits out of it for years and years but accept no financial, social or moral responsibility for their work. Thanks for commenting!
The BUS grant is not simply a "cost" to the government. The money goes into the pockets of installers, electricians, distributors etc. who go on to spend it and so it cycles into the economy (at least some of it), which leads to higher economic activity and tax receipts. It's a fiscal stimulus. In contrast, natural gas is subsidised and mostly imported, which means money leaving the economy for good. Electricity carries more tax and is mostly produced domestically (a small and shrinking percentage is made using gas). Also, the average UK gas boiler gets through 11,500 kWh of gas annually, which releases about 2.3 tons of CO2 (not including upstream emissions). According to some studies, the social cost of CO2 emissions is about $250 (£200) per ton in lost output, excess deaths, storm damage etc. This is called the social cost of carbon. So, gas boiler emissions are costing society globally about £460 per year. Assuming the emissions from running a heat pump are increasingly negligible, this alone could offset the BUS grant in about 17 years (well within the lifespan of a single heat pump).
My frustration, is I want to get my groundfloor converted to underfloor with a heat pump as part of a bigger project, all the technicians i've spoken to are too busy lobbing heat-pumps on walls and collecting 7500 a go, to be bothered with my project. The incentive is to install quantity, not quality as part of works to improve a building performance.
The actual work involved in retrofitting underfloor into a house is enormous compared to flipping a boiler to a heat pump, so I get why all these heating "specialists" will take all the easier jobs, especially if the list of punters is stacking up!
Who knows how long the BUS grant stays in place but I for one grabbed it while I could. They’ve taken the EV grant away and they will do the same for ASHPs sometime in the future. The grants are necessary to tempt the early adopters and prove to the general public the technology does work. Great response to the doom merchants out there, keep up the good work.
counter point, it's now cheaper to get an EV charger installed since the grant went away, and the chargers and installs I believe are considerably better (subjective I know)
@@edc1569 Octopus Energy used to install Zappi's for £450 (supply and fit) and local electricians were doing it for as low as £300. (My neighbour has one). If you can find someone to install a Zappi for less than £1k today like octopus does at £999 then you are doing well. I don't have extensive large data to support this but since getting my EV i've chatted with lots of friends and neighbours and anyone who's installed their charge point since the grant went has paid a significant amount more.
I believe it is price gouging. Was lucky, had Octopus do a survey, but ultimately went for a local supplier (sheffield). COP was well above 4. I chose to have a Mitsubishi Ecodan which has little coverage on UA-cam. Their app is poor, but plugged in a dongle which works with Home Assistant. The detail is outstanding and gives me full control.
The government is way behind on its internationally agreed climate targets (Net zero/COP29/Paris agreement/etc) that the BUS grant won't be going away anytime soon, and its going to cost a hell of a lot more than the BUS grant!
We had a ASHP fitted just over a year ago after moving into a 1960 bungalow with a dead gas boiler. A direct replacement gas system + all new pipework, rads etc was £7000, the ASHP after the £5000 grant cost us £8000 so £1000 more. Had we waited the newer larger grant would of made the ASHP less then a gas system! We love the heat pump and pairing it with the solar and battery system we have its saving us a fortune in bills.
Hey, love your videos. Like your pragmatic and data driven content. Agree with you that the BUS grant is really supporting the risk that early adopters take and with ASHP install having a high variability in complexity a generic grant is a reasonable way to hedge that risk. I think in a few more years there will be more competent installers and systems that allow for more turnkey experience will be on the market, reducing the need for incentives. Keep up the good work!
You could think of the BUS grant as government matching private investment into the UK's energy infrastructure. The money that private individuals are spending on solar panels, batteries, HP etc must save the UK billions by not having to replace those pesky coal power stations and UHV grid lines etc (not to mention the eye watering costs of a new Nuclear power stations) which would otherwise have to be paid for by everyone. Perhaps the wind power farms who are benefiting from all this can return a bit more to us all now ?
I wonder how much it costs our country to keep importing huge quantities of gas to run peoples boilers. I'm guessing it would be far more than the BUS grant.
Yeah, I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of comparing to other public spending, but it is true that many other things are subsidised to incredible amounts.
Other perspectives on the government grants for heat-pumps: Inject cash into the UK economy by partially funding new work on houses. Encourage households to inject their own into the economy. Help more households de-carbonize and move the UK towards meeting the Paris targets. Reduce the UK's reliance on Gas imports by moving more of energy requirements to UK generated Electricity. This helps with the UK's balance of payments.
Heat pumps should be fitted as standard in all new homes, but for those with EPCs around or below the average of D the money would be better spent on whole house retrofit. While the upfront cost are substantial, a national domestic retrofit programme could reduce the UK’s annual energy consumption by ~200 billion kWh a year and circumvent investment in new electricity generation.
@@clivepierce1816 my EPC was an E before we installed the heat pump. I did do a little insulation upgrade as shown on the channel but nothing major. Large enough emitters is all that's required. Oh and EPCs are not fit for purpose. Basically meaningless.
Re taxation and use of public funds: Those who have heat pumps are still paying their taxes that are used to subsidise the oil and gas industry, thus artificially lowering gas prices for non-heat pump users. If you want the govt to stop funding people’s heating out of taxes, be prepared for gas prices to match or exceed electricity prices!
The grants are a practical means to bridge the chasm in an adoption curve where we stall when moving through the early adopters stage. If we rely solely on the free market to do this then the impact on society could be enormous as we are forced to transition in too short a period of time.
My experience is there is a major problem with pricing. £22k from 2 companies for a system ( only the heat pump, I have full wet underfloor heating and a heat pump ready water cylinder) Pump to be sited less than 3m from all the manifolds. British gas price £10k and Octopus £11k . If you take the average it of course comes down but there are people being ripped off out there.
Excellent rational and neutral analysis! In Scotland there is an additional £7500 interest free loan available, which is fantastic, however this results in the majority of quotes starting at £15k with additional radiators pushing above above, in one case to £21k for a bungalow with reasonable insulation.
Nice 10k profit there for someone, do 40 a year, 400k ain't bad for a plumber - yet no one seems to want to pick up this trade - I'm almost thinking of bailing out of software engineering to do it!
Spot on. A heat pump costs around 2k to buy. They arnt that complex as a system (same as boilers really). Fitting isn’t that complex. Radiators and re plumbing is a bit more work and depending on what you have may well be a bit more of a problem since it could involve a lot of disruptive work, but there is a hell of a lot of profit in there that is being maintained by the government subsidy. All things like this should be paid back as tax credits agains your income tax so no supplier gets their hands on it. Giving it to the supplier just ends up with price gouging which is exactly what is happening. If they had to compete with boiler installations their prices would be far less.
@charlesamery-behr3153 My quote (N.E scotland) started and ended at @ £11,400 (before £7.5k deducted), that was for a complete heating and hot water replacement. Daikin 6kW Monoblock, feeds now 28mm, 7 new radiators and new Mixergy HWC. Two bed bungalow, modest insulation. For those off gas grid the grant in Scotland is £9k.
@@davideyres955 "Spot on. A heat pump costs around 2k to buy. They arnt that complex as a system (same as boilers really). " ===== My Daikin 6kW costs £3,142 (excludes VAT), Mixergy HWC £1,387 (excluding VAT), total cost of bits for my instal must've left a thin profit margin, six bodies for five days then three for a further two days. You are right that they're not overly complex, but like a boiler, if low flow temperatures required (below 35C) then there may be a lot of work involved.
We’ve just had a quote from a very well known company for a 5 kW Vaillant heat pump and Vaillant uniSTOR 200L. Should be an easy install as we already have an external boiler and the pipe runs are very short. With the replacement of 5 radiators it comes to £21,350. Price gouging?
Supply and demand in some cases. Some companies are so busy, they are pricing high to deter the work. Personally I got a long list of estimates and many of them were silly digits.
I started a change to ASHP in July with Heat Geek. After refusing their initial quote (to re pipe the entire house) I accepted their modified proposal and paid 25% on 26th October. I'm still waiting for their pre requisites to be completed and have no installation date. I think the DNO are holding this up. How can this process ever hope to upgrade a significant number of homes? Surely most people will only consider the upgrade when their gas heating is on the blink and would be unwilling to wait a week!
Totally agree. We suffered similarly. Our DNO (SSEN) could not understand that the 7kW label was nothing to do with the electrical requirement. I won't go into the other issues but it was a long and winding road that needs to become streamlined before mass adoption can happen.
Getting my heat pump installed next week! The grant definitely played a big role in my decision to make the change rather than replace the boiler with another one. I appreciated the more normal UA-cam "calls to action" like/subscribe etc. The "99% won't like!?!" from previous videos I thought was more annoying than useful.
Hey, thanks for what you do. Objective presentations such as your work can sometimes be difficult to find. Particularly in what has become a strangely divisive field Heat geek (Adam Chapman?) did a high level comparison between heat pump subsidies and subsidies which have and still are going into fossil fuels from UK government. May be worth a follow up video??
People struggle with the impact of inflation on big ticket items. The manufacturers and installers have done a good job at keeping things under control. It would also be interesting to see what impact the octopus value proposition has on the volume and average cost.
Yep, the grant should continue. As you’ve pointed out, our tax contributions to it are minuscule. The oil and gas industries receive direct and indirect (explicit & implicit) subsidies (largely care of the tax payer), and no one seems to complain. In 2023, they received $7 trillion globally in subsidies.
I accepted a quote Scottish Power next Quote 4 grand more expensive. System cost me 3.5 grand after grant. Had salesman offering system if I signed up then for 20 grand so I think there are some unscrupulous traders . I think as early adopters the grant encourages more installations . I would not have considered Air source heat pump without grant
The PV FIT grant was to build capacity to get the supply higher ready for the unit price drop. Will heat pump prices fall ? Everything from U-wave ovens , to PV & Batteries does come down in price . Even K3 radiators seem 25% cheaper than 2 years ago , so maybe ? . But with much of the HP work in the install how do we get that cheaper? Send the army to change he radiators ? Heat pump with HW tank built in , so its just 4 pipes connection ( permitted dev planning update coming to allow 1.5m3) Make it work with standard gas coils ?
Some more innovation is definitely required to enable mass roll out, that's for sure. This would all be simple if the spark gap and the merit order were fixed!
Fascinating analysis. One thing: from 5:00 you are comparing Oct 2021 at £15509 in today’s money to £12960 today. But unlike in 2021, we get the grant now. So the actual price for the whole job today would be £20460. So, customers are paying about £2500 less than in 2021, even though the BUS is subsiding the job by £7500. The other £5000 has been absorbed by labour costs and markup. I know this is how any type of grant ends up working, but I think it should be highlighted. Some would regard that as price gouging; others not.
The frustration for me is the many fingers in the pie, When I insulated my loft ~15 years ago the government subsidized the insulation rolls and B&Q had them at £1 per roll Insulated my loft for less than £20. A refrigerator is a heat pump, an air conditioning unit is a heat pump, you can get a heat pump tumble drier for ~£100 more than a conventional one. ASHP units should not cost 3 or 5 or 7 thousand pounds. When a 3.5kw Air conditioning unit is $300 in Wallmart, £235!!! Retail! MCS has their fingers in the pie, trade bodies for the handling of a few teaspoons of refrigerant, Electrical, and Plumbing trade bodies. all making what should be a
This is not a UK specific challenge. I've been informed that A2W is a premium product in the USA, Germany and Scandinavia at least. I can't tell you why that is. I would expect an uplift in price due to additional heat exchangers and some other bits and bobs but not as dramatic as the gap currently is. Perhaps it's down to economies of scale. A2A is widespread EVERYWHERE in the world. A2W is still a very small niche overall.
You can't really compare a portable/window unit with a heat pump. Especially, since the US sells them as cooling only a lot of the time still. Whilst it doesn't add up to the thousands, those units would be poor for heating, as they just don't have the things to deal with defrosts etc. With Vaillant ones etc, you are buying a product that can handle going down to ~-20C (whilst it wouldn't be sized for that in the UK). Technically, you could skimp out and DIY a ElectriQ split unit for about £700, but you're only covering space heating with that, not hot water.
@@UpsideDownFork I've had a look inside a few A2W units and aside from a pump, some plumbing fittings and a filter it's the same as an air conditioner. With 28 million homes in the UK needing to transition from gas I think we have the scale, what we don't have is the simplicity and and the willing to put profits before the environment and public health.
@@BenIsInSweden I'm not saying buy a $300 unit and install it backwards... what I am saying is if a 3.5kw heat pump can be produced for $300 then the additional BOM to handle water flow over the condenser rather than air, and as you correctly state a heating element/reversing valve for defrost. does not make a $300 unit $3,000 more likely $400. Unfortunately where there is government money on offer there are profits that can be inflated.
If these ashp work like a heat pump tumble dryer id advise avoiding them. Had a heat pump dryer and would take forever to dry clothes. Got a standard condenser and dried in under an hour.
Without it i would of never been able to afford it and would of had to have a boiler instead 😞 I wanted it to reduce our carbon output We earn pretty basic money im a bus driver, and the wife is in college trying to better her life working part time as well. I had to use inheritance from my nan to pay the rest of it to the tune of £4000. Saving £4000 whilst paying a mortgage and living day to day life would take years let alone the £11500 it actually cost before the grant. Im also really keen to get a ev and solar panels but no driveway kills the ev and no cash kills the solar. Could get a loan and pay massive amounts of interest kills the savings We are not high users of electricity a warm month is 150kwh a extremely cold month is about 450kwh.
Going to get a few quotes early 2025, but not expecting it to ve viable enough or cost effective to run vs our existing Combi tbh. Want to have expert analysis snd costings hiwever, to be far to the technology
@UpsideDownFork Hopefully I'll be able to share findings, rather than my own amateur estimates. Granted, with the wealth and quality of online material, I don't think (sadly) I'll be too far wrong, I need to make a call as to further sweat our 10yo Combi (avg gas cost
With some of the electrical heat pump tariffs they can be considerably cost effective to run in comparison to gas, with an annual HP SCOP of 3.4 being the tipping point where cheaper than gas, using standard tariffs for both. My 14p/kWh HP tariff makes it half the cost of gas to run. In terms of pure energy efficiency the heat pump will always win by a large margin. As renewable production increases over the years HP's will become even cheaper to operate.
If you were an installer would you lose out on free money with no one checking? Government grant are always the same, we had warm front years ago for boilers , customers got bad installation and companies made millions
I think some installers are price gouging, not sure if that is the correct word though. There is always a subsection of businesses that take advantage of these sort of things, whether that be solar, insulation, heat pumps, or anything else the government throws money at. There are a fair few companies doing extremely poor work and charging top money for it. Unfortunately this sort of thing has always gone on, and always will. A few years ago my elderly mother-in-law got a grant to have her bath replaced with a walk in shower, she had to use a council approved installer, the work was absolutely shockingly bad (so why were they approved???), so much so that we threw them off site and they had to find another company to do it, and yes the cost was OTT. I'm of the same opinion as you, I've paid loads of taxes ever since I started work, it'll be nice to get something back for a change as I've always worked and never received benefits apart from the child benefit you automatically get.
I like how we arrived at the same ~0.001p figure per install in a completely different way. Mine was the total BUS Grant divided by the total number of taxpayers in the UK divided by the number of potential installations the BUS grant is allocated for. Granted, mine was based on when Andy Clayton did his on the £5K grant, but given we're in the fractions of a penny territory, it's not going to change a huge amount. It just doesn't make sense to moan in UA-cam comments either to the people using the grant (but that's a given 😂). You (or anyone for that matter) could offer to donate to charity the equivalent amount per UA-cam commenter complaining, and even if every viewer of your "Brutal Truth" video complained, the charity would get 50p.
You compared a RHI install price to a BUS price to see if there was price gouging. The RHI was very generous return but only available to those with upfront savings to invest themselves, so I'm not convinced that was true market price heat pump install costs tbh. I'd also wonder how much of the additional installs in the later part are energy suppliers like Octopus who are aggressively driving down pricing countering any price hikes by others. Still interesting to see very limited change before/after the 5-7.5k hike. On the morality side, I didn't install a heatpump for my benefit, I doubt I will break even on my the install costs vs a new gas boiler even though I can run it marginally cheaper. It was to reduce emissions which is to benefit everyone globally.
Thanks for commenting. Have a little look at the MCS database. You can see that pre RHI, Post RHI, pre BUS, £5k BUS, £7.5k BUS...every which way, heat pump installations are falling in cost, at least in real terms once inflation comes into it. I take your point about octopus driving down the overall cost. I would love to get access to that data!
You would need to apply inflation to pre 2009 installation costs, since after that you had FIT, RHI etc etc etc. You need to compare before public money was involved in funding. If i remember correctly, i think installation costs(would have been for my circumstances) for a mitsubishi Ecodan plus 300ltr cylinder was around £6000 early 2010 which i believe should work out around £9000 now. I'm in a four bed detached, so very much doubt it would come in at the £12K 'average' in the current climate. I wish i could get info on how ofgen calculates the Cap, given that the price of Nat Gas is 3.377 currently and from 2002 it has rarely been this low (more time spent above this cost than below it)
Air to water heat pumps weren't included on the RHI list until April 2014 (when full domestic RHI went live, even though some payments were backdated due to the protracted delay.) I appreciate that from September 2011 there was a slightly half baked interim RHI scheme. Prior to April 2014, you can see that most of the incentive went to bio mass boilers and some GSHP. You can use that MCS dashboard to come to exactly the same conclusion that I did. If you want to compare 2009 to 2024, the gap is even greater. I don't believe FIT or any other government scheme prior to RHI could be utilised for heat pumps?
@@UpsideDownFork Unfortunately mate, I cannot argue the point as i dont have the data available, but i know i could have got some sort of 'Scottish' grant for ASHP and also Solar Thermal, depending on its output. I missed the deadline, because i waited so long for a Bgas quote for a CHP system, which was my preferred choice at the time. I cant remember what it was called. I just remember that my solar PV installation was finally done at £10K but i was getting several quotes between £16K - £20K all 'based on' what i could be earning back with FIT.
Good video but It would be useful to know the percentage of installations being done by the big energy suppliers vs the independent 'specialists' . My view would be that he average price being the same(ish) now is heavily being dragged down by the economies of scale available to the likes of Octopus and British Gas and how much control they have over the supply chain (i.e Octopus now manufacture their own pumps). you only have to look at China EV production to see how crucial this is to reducing prices to the consumer. I also think that the big energy firms have a lot of political pressure to make the Heat pump transition succeed and hence they are prepared to operate on very small profit margins for these installations also bearing in mind they have a massive income from energy supply in general.
Thanks for the comment! I've been reliably informed by insiders that both British Gas and Octopus Energy are both installing heat pumps at a loss to date. They both aim to become profitable in 2025.
Not like for like but I had a quote for a Vailant Heat Pump in 2020, new cylinder and wall mounting the total price was £10500. Not gone back to them but recent finger in the air estimate from Octopus web site is £4500 after grants (so about £1500 more) and Heat Geek equivalent is £7500 after BUS and neither of them will be wall mounting for that. On a £12000 install they are roughly taking £4500 after materials, on £15000 instal they are taking £7500 after materials. Appreciate its all about supply and demand but I expect it is a very profitable business installing heat pumps right now.
Perhaps. Both BG and Octopus are running at a loss installing heat pumps at the moment. They expect to become profitable in 2025. Plumber day rate is ~£350 per day now. How long did your installation take and how many men on site?
@UpsideDownFork I didn't go ahead with it as was more than I could afford (was doing house renovation) so needed the money elsewhere. I suppose my older quote was 5 years ago and only £1500 different to octopus. Different ways can look at it I suppose. I think when I get a heat pump I'll considering DIYing it as labour costs seems crazy and no one wants to wall mount them.
I can see the argument for price. Using your numbers. When the grant was £5k the average price was £12,706 and now with the grant being £7.5k the numbers are £12,960. So over that year the BOE calculator gives a figure of £12,977. So the average install is £17 less but the BUS grant is £2.5k more. So the average install is making £2483 more or about 20%. I'd say that's quite a lot.
The average prices are before the grant is factored in. So what's shown on the dashboard is the actual cost of installation, not the cost to the customer.
@UpsideDownFork Ah ok. But the money is being skimmed off. If you find somebody who had a quote last year and then had one now I bet it's not the difference in the BUS grant less (minus the tiny bit of inflation). Be interesting to see if there is anybody here who did have a survey last year but decided against it but have decided to go for it this autumn for a real world comparison.
Did I feel guilty accepting the BUS Grant, No, most of us sitting in the middle have paid in more than enough tax during our working careers to pay this many times over, it's about time we finally receive a tiny rebate back on the money we have already paid out.
I think you missed a section on this video when looking at the costs. The technology around heat pumps has been around for a very long time especially when you consider air conditioners are heat pumps, why are the air to water heat pumps significantly more expensive to buy and install even without radiator upgrades. I get there is a need for a hot water tank but £12k for a heat pump and dhw tank does seem excessive. How many people would even consider this route without the grant? So is the grant keeping the price higher than it would be without it, if the price has stayed the same over time, I know with inflation a stable product would increase in price but when the numbers of installs, installers and manufacturers are increasing yearly competition should be bringing the prices down. The idea that this is a new, early adopter phase again isn't really true yes in the UK we have focused on gas boilers in homes but offices and businesses tend to install heat pumps in the form of ac units
This is not a UK specific challenge. I've been informed that A2W is a premium product in the USA, Germany and Scandinavia at least. I can't tell you why that is. I would expect an uplift in price due to additional heat exchangers and some other bits and bobs but not as dramatic as the gap currently is. Perhaps it's down to economies of scale. A2A is widespread EVERYWHERE in the world. A2W is still a very small niche overall.
Problem is your telling the truth, and you can’t shout and complain about the truth. Mainly because it’s always someone’s else’s fault and it’s always someone else wasting our money. Truth, analysis and common sense seems to have left these peoples brains, or maybe the truth doesn’t get clicks and watched.
I don't buy the early adopter risks etc. This isn't new technology - we could easily develop building codes and best practices based on other European countries, but we don't like to admit that we're behind. It should also be means tested. Like the winter fuel allowance, a millionaire shouldn't be getting fuel money to heat their pool. The way to get adoption is to make it mandatory in the building code. Start with new builds, move onto landlords and building associations. People on low incomes, kids in fuel poverty, grannies on public pension etc, should get the grant money.
The NHS spends the yearly BUS amount everyday on needless postage stamps and envelopes I imagine 🤦♂ Jokes aside, this is no different to the Feed in Tariff - it worked to drive down PV cost but subsequently reduced in the amount paid for generation - I know people paying £15k for a 4kWp in 2011, I paid £7k in 2013 but am receiving less than half per kWh produced. The BUS is a one off upfront payment and cynically that money is simply being diverted into something that benefits all of society as every gas boiler that's replaced is XXXkg of CO2 less that is being contributed to the atmosphere - it also drives the heating industry to lower costs (hopefully) but importantly educates those jobbing plumbers that there are other opportunities for CPD and not just slinging in the biggest boiler they can find for an easy £2k - this is the long game that is being missed by those critical of such grants. The competition also ramps up so if one chancer quotes £££ there will be others who will compete - it's an interesting time to be watching from the sidelines... Now instead of wasting money on postage for needless envelopes, if the NHS used that money wisely, just imagine how many extra nurses/doctors/hospitals could be employed/built or operations take place - it's the "big brain" thinking that's needed - not the "small brain" waste and envy that currently exists...
To ensure that all households can afford to replace a gas boiler with a heat pump, the BUS grant really needs to cover the full cost of installation. Otherwise, this tax-funded grant is only available to the more wealthy households.
Thanks for commenting! The data doesn't seem to support that view. Have a closer look at the MCS dashboard and maybe investigate ECO4. You'll quickly find that the lion's share of heat pumps are being installed in less wealthy households.
@@markbeal2414I'd not heard of ECO4. Sadly it says for our house "Your rating score is:B Due to the EPC rating of your property, your home's rating is unlikely to be improved by the measures we install". We certainly can't afford the £8k Heat Geek estimate an ASHP will cost us after BUS. Why are ASHP's so expensive?
They have been installing heat pumps at a considerable loss and they are hoping to become profitable in 2025 so the increase in their pricing doesn't surprise me at all.
Having paid tax for fifty years then the government taking my fuel allowance and giving it to keep the boat people in nice warm hotels , would the same people who say it’s wrong to get the grant for heat pumps by calling them leaches what then are the boat people? Just my opinion nothing to do with being right or wrong, so many installations now have been highlighted for items that’s not needed with a heat pump installed be it buffer tanks or extra valves or vessels, basically the list is endless of items not needed with a heat pump , is it lack of knowledge maybe , is it justifying the cost of price of installation due to extra things which is no needed maybe , someone or possibly AI would be able to put house details in a program and out pops what’s needed be it what size heat pump that calculation of parts etc, when I see video after video of people saying not only have the installation have used parts not needed but by doing so it’s costing the homeowner more money the run the system. So taking the guesswork out of the installation itself of what they think is needed is probably the first step , please no reply is needed with the the words thanks for commenting seems somewhat ingenious = only my opinion.
Thanks for commenting! Haha! I do believe the industry is trending towards that philosophy of less is more, so your thinking is along the right lines. No comment on the political aspect, I always get myself in trouble when I go down that rabbit hole!
@@UpsideDownFork At least the rabbits are warmer than the pensioners , like anything in life one tend to get cowboys that needs to be rounded up , personally until you get the guesswork or one might say slight of hand out of the industry then the uptake with more people complaining about the installation it’s going to take along time for people to decide it’s a good thing , I think the company or person where you can put your details in to a program such a kitchen planner that would be a step in the right direction, takes away the cowboys saying oh yes you need all of this stuff to work efficiently in reality probably only need a third.
![LAVROV's interview with Tucker CARLSON 😁 [Parody]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mbMemqc-QEk/mqdefault.jpg)
Regarding the cost of the grant to taxpayers, it would be interesting to look at the rising costs of flooding and storm damage. If the rising trend is extrapolated the cost of global warming will probably rise exponentially, making grant expenditure completely insignificant. rotate. That's before considering the impact of deaths, misery and loss of production.
If the EA hadn't interfered with watercourse maintenance, flooding would largely not have happened. My drainage board failed to regularly cleanse dykes for years before the 2007 event which damaged huge areas in East Yorkshire. Greentard thinking put human deellings at risk, second to bugs and birds nests
Thanks for commenting!
Another major cost will be the major fines we face for not honouring our commitment to the Paris agreement. If this helps reach net zero its very good value indeed.
Another thing to consider is how absolutely irrelevant any of our actions are in the UK when you consider the actions of China, India and the USA.
@Chris-hy6jy usa are having a break from giving a sh*t . China are surging forward and will make us all look very outdated in terms of the green revolution.
People should be more worried about the money given to fossil fuel companies for "exploration" and such like, this dwarfs the BUS grant. The £22b of our money which will be given for carbon capture and storage is just a sop to the fossil fuel industry to help them keep extracting fossil fuels, a disgrace.
Was there the same complaint about grants for upgrading to a condensing boiler? At least upgrading to a heat pump saves significant carbon.
How else would people like to push the move to heat pumps? Just say from 2025 no new gas boilers installed? There'd be more complaints about that. (Actually, no brand-new homes should have had gas supplied for at least a decade, there is no excuse for a new-build having gas).
Agreed. Don't forget the madness with the wind farm industry that are paid by us taxpayers not to generate electricity when there is no demand in the national grid, regardless of how much energy the wind farms can generate in that given period. And a simple building regs change would bring about new home builds adoption of ASHP and solar. Wonder why that has not be implement by any major political party to date......
@@MadAntz970 The lack of investment in the grid is a disgrace, without investment we cannot proceed properly. While Scottish windmills are being turned off, gas fired power stations elsewhere are being paid to turn on (and output carbon) because the grid cannot transfer the power from the wind farms.
This shows the folly of having a privately owned national grid, why would they care? They only exist to make money.
@@MentalLentil-ev9jr Agreed. It's the Elephant in the room, and will continue to be kicked into the long grass. Some offshore projects have been slowed down, even though they have consent, as they are waiting for grid interconnection points to be made available.
Thanks for commenting. Agreed!
@@MentalLentil-ev9jr perhaps more than a disgrace, is it perhaps a deliberate reluctance to end fossil fuel generation & high energy prices, by going slowly ???
Brilliant analysis, thank you! I'm in the process of getting an ashp now but wouldn't consider it without the grant.
My home survey is booked for the first week in January......
Thanks for commenting!
Thank you for your analysis. I am one of those "early adopters" that you are talking about since I finished installation of an ASHP a couple of months ago
I have 2 comments: 1) as you clearly say the amount of labour hours is important, in my case calculated as 3 FT engineers/technicians x 7 days = 21 FT salaries of highly trained persons for the field work only (plus office work which I can't estimate because I can't see). In addition the huge number of items and many dozens of meters of copper pipes needed are also considerable
The total price (including Bus was calculated at around 15500 which I find very descent. I have experience of plumbers charging me 4500 for a measly gas boiler installed in a couple of hours approximately 15 years ago, way before the inflation that we are experiencing now.....that is the true gouging....
2) We shouldn't see ourselves as early adopters. I come from an EU country and I observed that all over europe including cold scandinavian countries the adoption is waaay faster than here
That is in essence the meaning of the grant: to accelerate adoption and to provide a descent income to those skilled workers that are transitioning from a defunct fossil industry to the sustainable future
Thanks for commenting!
The tax payer pays decommissioning costs for North Sea oil rigs. " cost of decommissioning at £44bn by 2063 - with taxpayers on the hook for at least £14bn in the form of tax rebates." So said the Daily Telegraph last year.
Great, private companies take profits out of it for years and years but accept no financial, social or moral responsibility for their work.
Thanks for commenting!
The BUS grant is not simply a "cost" to the government. The money goes into the pockets of installers, electricians, distributors etc. who go on to spend it and so it cycles into the economy (at least some of it), which leads to higher economic activity and tax receipts. It's a fiscal stimulus. In contrast, natural gas is subsidised and mostly imported, which means money leaving the economy for good. Electricity carries more tax and is mostly produced domestically (a small and shrinking percentage is made using gas).
Also, the average UK gas boiler gets through 11,500 kWh of gas annually, which releases about 2.3 tons of CO2 (not including upstream emissions). According to some studies, the social cost of CO2 emissions is about $250 (£200) per ton in lost output, excess deaths, storm damage etc. This is called the social cost of carbon. So, gas boiler emissions are costing society globally about £460 per year. Assuming the emissions from running a heat pump are increasingly negligible, this alone could offset the BUS grant in about 17 years (well within the lifespan of a single heat pump).
Thanks for commenting! Brilliant!
How can "the emissions from running a heat pump are increasingly negligible" - more than half our electric is produced by fossil fuel burning!
My frustration, is I want to get my groundfloor converted to underfloor with a heat pump as part of a bigger project, all the technicians i've spoken to are too busy lobbing heat-pumps on walls and collecting 7500 a go, to be bothered with my project. The incentive is to install quantity, not quality as part of works to improve a building performance.
The actual work involved in retrofitting underfloor into a house is enormous compared to flipping a boiler to a heat pump, so I get why all these heating "specialists" will take all the easier jobs, especially if the list of punters is stacking up!
There's definitely a considerable imbalance between supply and demand here!
Where abouts in the UK are you?
Who knows how long the BUS grant stays in place but I for one grabbed it while I could. They’ve taken the EV grant away and they will do the same for ASHPs sometime in the future. The grants are necessary to tempt the early adopters and prove to the general public the technology does work. Great response to the doom merchants out there, keep up the good work.
Thank you! 🙏
counter point, it's now cheaper to get an EV charger installed since the grant went away, and the chargers and installs I believe are considerably better (subjective I know)
@@edc1569 Octopus Energy used to install Zappi's for £450 (supply and fit) and local electricians were doing it for as low as £300. (My neighbour has one).
If you can find someone to install a Zappi for less than £1k today like octopus does at £999 then you are doing well.
I don't have extensive large data to support this but since getting my EV i've chatted with lots of friends and neighbours and anyone who's installed their charge point since the grant went has paid a significant amount more.
I believe it is price gouging.
Was lucky, had Octopus do a survey, but ultimately went for a local supplier (sheffield). COP was well above 4.
I chose to have a Mitsubishi Ecodan which has little coverage on UA-cam. Their app is poor, but plugged in a dongle which works with Home Assistant. The detail is outstanding and gives me full control.
The government is way behind on its internationally agreed climate targets (Net zero/COP29/Paris agreement/etc) that the BUS grant won't be going away anytime soon, and its going to cost a hell of a lot more than the BUS grant!
We had a ASHP fitted just over a year ago after moving into a 1960 bungalow with a dead gas boiler. A direct replacement gas system + all new pipework, rads etc was £7000, the ASHP after the £5000 grant cost us £8000 so £1000 more. Had we waited the newer larger grant would of made the ASHP less then a gas system! We love the heat pump and pairing it with the solar and battery system we have its saving us a fortune in bills.
Thanks for commenting! Very closely matches my experience!
Hey, love your videos. Like your pragmatic and data driven content. Agree with you that the BUS grant is really supporting the risk that early adopters take and with ASHP install having a high variability in complexity a generic grant is a reasonable way to hedge that risk. I think in a few more years there will be more competent installers and systems that allow for more turnkey experience will be on the market, reducing the need for incentives. Keep up the good work!
Well said!
Loved your analysis of the data, I just need to remember the numbers for the next time I’m challenged 😂
You could think of the BUS grant as government matching private investment into the UK's energy infrastructure. The money that private individuals are spending on solar panels, batteries, HP etc must save the UK billions by not having to replace those pesky coal power stations and UHV grid lines etc (not to mention the eye watering costs of a new Nuclear power stations) which would otherwise have to be paid for by everyone. Perhaps the wind power farms who are benefiting from all this can return a bit more to us all now ?
Great comment, thanks for sharing!
I wonder how much it costs our country to keep importing huge quantities of gas to run peoples boilers. I'm guessing it would be far more than the BUS grant.
gas was only subsidised for a few months in 2022/3, you're paying what it costs with a nice chunk of profit too.
Yeah, I didn't want to go down the rabbit hole of comparing to other public spending, but it is true that many other things are subsidised to incredible amounts.
Other perspectives on the government grants for heat-pumps:
Inject cash into the UK economy by partially funding new work on houses.
Encourage households to inject their own into the economy.
Help more households de-carbonize and move the UK towards meeting the Paris targets.
Reduce the UK's reliance on Gas imports by moving more of energy requirements to UK generated Electricity. This helps with the UK's balance of payments.
Thanks for commenting!
Heat pumps should be fitted as standard in all new homes, but for those with EPCs around or below the average of D the money would be better spent on whole house retrofit. While the upfront cost are substantial, a national domestic retrofit programme could reduce the UK’s annual energy consumption by ~200 billion kWh a year and circumvent investment in new electricity generation.
@@clivepierce1816 my EPC was an E before we installed the heat pump. I did do a little insulation upgrade as shown on the channel but nothing major.
Large enough emitters is all that's required.
Oh and EPCs are not fit for purpose. Basically meaningless.
The government often uses fiscal incentives to modify behaviour, unleaded petrol as an example or the switch from coal gas.
Thanks for commenting!
God forbid some of us actual net contributor tax payers (yes I know there are not may of us left now) actually get something back for what we pay in!
Thanks for commenting!
Re taxation and use of public funds:
Those who have heat pumps are still paying their taxes that are used to subsidise the oil and gas industry, thus artificially lowering gas prices for non-heat pump users.
If you want the govt to stop funding people’s heating out of taxes, be prepared for gas prices to match or exceed electricity prices!
Thanks for commenting!
The grants are a practical means to bridge the chasm in an adoption curve where we stall when moving through the early adopters stage. If we rely solely on the free market to do this then the impact on society could be enormous as we are forced to transition in too short a period of time.
Thanks for commenting!
My experience is there is a major problem with pricing. £22k from 2 companies for a system ( only the heat pump, I have full wet underfloor heating and a heat pump ready water cylinder) Pump to be sited less than 3m from all the manifolds. British gas price £10k and Octopus £11k . If you take the average it of course comes down but there are people being ripped off out there.
Thanks for commenting!
Great video.... just as the feed in tariff got people buying solar panels
Great point
Excellent rational and neutral analysis! In Scotland there is an additional £7500 interest free loan available, which is fantastic, however this results in the majority of quotes starting at £15k with additional radiators pushing above above, in one case to £21k for a bungalow with reasonable insulation.
Nice 10k profit there for someone, do 40 a year, 400k ain't bad for a plumber - yet no one seems to want to pick up this trade - I'm almost thinking of bailing out of software engineering to do it!
Spot on. A heat pump costs around 2k to buy. They arnt that complex as a system (same as boilers really).
Fitting isn’t that complex. Radiators and re plumbing is a bit more work and depending on what you have may well be a bit more of a problem since it could involve a lot of disruptive work, but there is a hell of a lot of profit in there that is being maintained by the government subsidy.
All things like this should be paid back as tax credits agains your income tax so no supplier gets their hands on it. Giving it to the supplier just ends up with price gouging which is exactly what is happening. If they had to compete with boiler installations their prices would be far less.
Thanks for highlighting this.
@charlesamery-behr3153
My quote (N.E scotland) started and ended at @ £11,400 (before £7.5k deducted), that was for a complete heating and hot water replacement. Daikin 6kW Monoblock, feeds now 28mm, 7 new radiators and new Mixergy HWC. Two bed bungalow, modest insulation.
For those off gas grid the grant in Scotland is £9k.
@@davideyres955
"Spot on. A heat pump costs around 2k to buy. They arnt that complex as a system (same as boilers really). "
=====
My Daikin 6kW costs £3,142 (excludes VAT), Mixergy HWC £1,387 (excluding VAT), total cost of bits for my instal must've left a thin profit margin, six bodies for five days then three for a further two days.
You are right that they're not overly complex, but like a boiler, if low flow temperatures required (below 35C) then there may be a lot of work involved.
We’ve just had a quote from a very well known company for a 5 kW Vaillant heat pump and Vaillant uniSTOR 200L. Should be an easy install as we already have an external boiler and the pipe runs are very short. With the replacement of 5 radiators it comes to £21,350. Price gouging?
Supply and demand in some cases. Some companies are so busy, they are pricing high to deter the work.
Personally I got a long list of estimates and many of them were silly digits.
I started a change to ASHP in July with Heat Geek. After refusing their initial quote (to re pipe the entire house) I accepted their modified proposal and paid 25% on 26th October. I'm still waiting for their pre requisites to be completed and have no installation date. I think the DNO are holding this up.
How can this process ever hope to upgrade a significant number of homes? Surely most people will only consider the upgrade when their gas heating is on the blink and would be unwilling to wait a week!
Totally agree. We suffered similarly.
Our DNO (SSEN) could not understand that the 7kW label was nothing to do with the electrical requirement.
I won't go into the other issues but it was a long and winding road that needs to become streamlined before mass adoption can happen.
Having seen previous car and boiler scrap-page schemes there's an awful lot of pushback on this compared to those.
Thanks for commenting!
Getting my heat pump installed next week! The grant definitely played a big role in my decision to make the change rather than replace the boiler with another one.
I appreciated the more normal UA-cam "calls to action" like/subscribe etc. The "99% won't like!?!" from previous videos I thought was more annoying than useful.
Thanks for commenting and the feedback!
Hey, thanks for what you do. Objective presentations such as your work can sometimes be difficult to find. Particularly in what has become a strangely divisive field
Heat geek (Adam Chapman?) did a high level comparison between heat pump subsidies and subsidies which have and still are going into fossil fuels from UK government.
May be worth a follow up video??
Great suggestion! I've had a quick look around but not finding it. Any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated 👍
It was on linked in from 1 month ago. Can't seem to copy the link without getting a UA-cam error?@@UpsideDownFork
Great content, but I'd love to know how your solar panels performed in the month of November 😊
Coming soon! ua-cam.com/video/OMZXUW2Zq_w/v-deo.html
People struggle with the impact of inflation on big ticket items. The manufacturers and installers have done a good job at keeping things under control.
It would also be interesting to see what impact the octopus value proposition has on the volume and average cost.
Thanks for commenting!
Both of these are very important points. I would LOVE to see the data broken down by installation company!
Yep, the grant should continue. As you’ve pointed out, our tax contributions to it are minuscule.
The oil and gas industries receive direct and indirect (explicit & implicit) subsidies (largely care of the tax payer), and no one seems to complain. In 2023, they received $7 trillion globally in subsidies.
Thanks for commenting!
I accepted a quote Scottish Power next Quote 4 grand more expensive. System cost me 3.5 grand after grant. Had salesman offering system if I signed up then for 20 grand so I think there are some unscrupulous traders . I think as early adopters the grant encourages more installations . I would not have considered Air source heat pump without grant
Thanks for commenting! It's a shame that there are some bad eggs out there. Especially in the sales departments.
The PV FIT grant was to build capacity to get the supply higher ready for the unit price drop. Will heat pump prices fall ? Everything from U-wave ovens , to PV & Batteries does come down in price . Even K3 radiators seem 25% cheaper than 2 years ago , so maybe ? . But with much of the HP work in the install how do we get that cheaper? Send the army to change he radiators ? Heat pump with HW tank built in , so its just 4 pipes connection ( permitted dev planning update coming to allow 1.5m3) Make it work with standard gas coils ?
Some more innovation is definitely required to enable mass roll out, that's for sure.
This would all be simple if the spark gap and the merit order were fixed!
Fascinating analysis. One thing: from 5:00 you are comparing Oct 2021 at £15509 in today’s money to £12960 today. But unlike in 2021, we get the grant now. So the actual price for the whole job today would be £20460.
So, customers are paying about £2500 less than in 2021, even though the BUS is subsiding the job by £7500. The other £5000 has been absorbed by labour costs and markup.
I know this is how any type of grant ends up working, but I think it should be highlighted. Some would regard that as price gouging; others not.
The prices on the MCS dashboard exclude the grant, so the £12960 price would cost the customer £5460.
@ ah, sorry my mistake there 👍🏻
The frustration for me is the many fingers in the pie, When I insulated my loft ~15 years ago the government subsidized the insulation rolls and B&Q had them at £1 per roll Insulated my loft for less than £20. A refrigerator is a heat pump, an air conditioning unit is a heat pump, you can get a heat pump tumble drier for ~£100 more than a conventional one.
ASHP units should not cost 3 or 5 or 7 thousand pounds. When a 3.5kw Air conditioning unit is $300 in Wallmart, £235!!! Retail!
MCS has their fingers in the pie, trade bodies for the handling of a few teaspoons of refrigerant, Electrical, and Plumbing trade bodies. all making what should be a
This is not a UK specific challenge. I've been informed that A2W is a premium product in the USA, Germany and Scandinavia at least.
I can't tell you why that is. I would expect an uplift in price due to additional heat exchangers and some other bits and bobs but not as dramatic as the gap currently is.
Perhaps it's down to economies of scale. A2A is widespread EVERYWHERE in the world. A2W is still a very small niche overall.
You can't really compare a portable/window unit with a heat pump. Especially, since the US sells them as cooling only a lot of the time still.
Whilst it doesn't add up to the thousands, those units would be poor for heating, as they just don't have the things to deal with defrosts etc. With Vaillant ones etc, you are buying a product that can handle going down to ~-20C (whilst it wouldn't be sized for that in the UK).
Technically, you could skimp out and DIY a ElectriQ split unit for about £700, but you're only covering space heating with that, not hot water.
@@UpsideDownFork I've had a look inside a few A2W units and aside from a pump, some plumbing fittings and a filter it's the same as an air conditioner.
With 28 million homes in the UK needing to transition from gas I think we have the scale, what we don't have is the simplicity and and the willing to put profits before the environment and public health.
@@BenIsInSweden I'm not saying buy a $300 unit and install it backwards... what I am saying is if a 3.5kw heat pump can be produced for $300 then the additional BOM to handle water flow over the condenser rather than air, and as you correctly state a heating element/reversing valve for defrost. does not make a $300 unit $3,000 more likely $400.
Unfortunately where there is government money on offer there are profits that can be inflated.
If these ashp work like a heat pump tumble dryer id advise avoiding them. Had a heat pump dryer and would take forever to dry clothes. Got a standard condenser and dried in under an hour.
Without it i would of never been able to afford it and would of had to have a boiler instead 😞
I wanted it to reduce our carbon output
We earn pretty basic money im a bus driver, and the wife is in college trying to better her life working part time as well.
I had to use inheritance from my nan to pay the rest of it to the tune of £4000.
Saving £4000 whilst paying a mortgage and living day to day life would take years let alone the £11500 it actually cost before the grant.
Im also really keen to get a ev and solar panels but no driveway kills the ev and no cash kills the solar.
Could get a loan and pay massive amounts of interest kills the savings
We are not high users of electricity a warm month is 150kwh a extremely cold month is about 450kwh.
There's got to be a joke in there somewhere about a bus driver getting the bus grant.
@BenIsInSweden I've been BUSted
Thanks for commenting!
Going to get a few quotes early 2025, but not expecting it to ve viable enough or cost effective to run vs our existing Combi tbh.
Want to have expert analysis snd costings hiwever, to be far to the technology
Thanks for commenting!
@UpsideDownFork Hopefully I'll be able to share findings, rather than my own amateur estimates.
Granted, with the wealth and quality of online material, I don't think (sadly) I'll be too far wrong, I need to make a call as to further sweat our 10yo Combi (avg gas cost
With some of the electrical heat pump tariffs they can be considerably cost effective to run in comparison to gas, with an annual HP SCOP of 3.4 being the tipping point where cheaper than gas, using standard tariffs for both.
My 14p/kWh HP tariff makes it half the cost of gas to run.
In terms of pure energy efficiency the heat pump will always win by a large margin.
As renewable production increases over the years HP's will become even cheaper to operate.
A lot of people were getting £200 of tax payers money just to burn it with no tangible asset at the end of it and on one moaned about that.
Thanks for commenting!
I wonder how many ASHP installations are less than £7500?
To the customer or the overall cost? Meaning the customer got it completely for free?
That would be interesting to know.
If you were an installer would you lose out on free money with no one checking? Government grant are always the same, we had warm front years ago for boilers , customers got bad installation and companies made millions
I think some installers are price gouging, not sure if that is the correct word though. There is always a subsection of businesses that take advantage of these sort of things, whether that be solar, insulation, heat pumps, or anything else the government throws money at. There are a fair few companies doing extremely poor work and charging top money for it. Unfortunately this sort of thing has always gone on, and always will. A few years ago my elderly mother-in-law got a grant to have her bath replaced with a walk in shower, she had to use a council approved installer, the work was absolutely shockingly bad (so why were they approved???), so much so that we threw them off site and they had to find another company to do it, and yes the cost was OTT. I'm of the same opinion as you, I've paid loads of taxes ever since I started work, it'll be nice to get something back for a change as I've always worked and never received benefits apart from the child benefit you automatically get.
Thanks for commenting 👍
I like how we arrived at the same ~0.001p figure per install in a completely different way. Mine was the total BUS Grant divided by the total number of taxpayers in the UK divided by the number of potential installations the BUS grant is allocated for.
Granted, mine was based on when Andy Clayton did his on the £5K grant, but given we're in the fractions of a penny territory, it's not going to change a huge amount.
It just doesn't make sense to moan in UA-cam comments either to the people using the grant (but that's a given 😂). You (or anyone for that matter) could offer to donate to charity the equivalent amount per UA-cam commenter complaining, and even if every viewer of your "Brutal Truth" video complained, the charity would get 50p.
Thanks for commenting. Agreed!
You compared a RHI install price to a BUS price to see if there was price gouging. The RHI was very generous return but only available to those with upfront savings to invest themselves, so I'm not convinced that was true market price heat pump install costs tbh.
I'd also wonder how much of the additional installs in the later part are energy suppliers like Octopus who are aggressively driving down pricing countering any price hikes by others. Still interesting to see very limited change before/after the 5-7.5k hike.
On the morality side, I didn't install a heatpump for my benefit, I doubt I will break even on my the install costs vs a new gas boiler even though I can run it marginally cheaper. It was to reduce emissions which is to benefit everyone globally.
Thanks for commenting.
Have a little look at the MCS database. You can see that pre RHI, Post RHI, pre BUS, £5k BUS, £7.5k BUS...every which way, heat pump installations are falling in cost, at least in real terms once inflation comes into it.
I take your point about octopus driving down the overall cost. I would love to get access to that data!
You would need to apply inflation to pre 2009 installation costs, since after that you had FIT, RHI etc etc etc. You need to compare before public money was involved in funding. If i remember correctly, i think installation costs(would have been for my circumstances) for a mitsubishi Ecodan plus 300ltr cylinder was around £6000 early 2010 which i believe should work out around £9000 now. I'm in a four bed detached, so very much doubt it would come in at the £12K 'average' in the current climate. I wish i could get info on how ofgen calculates the Cap, given that the price of Nat Gas is 3.377 currently and from 2002 it has rarely been this low (more time spent above this cost than below it)
Air to water heat pumps weren't included on the RHI list until April 2014 (when full domestic RHI went live, even though some payments were backdated due to the protracted delay.)
I appreciate that from September 2011 there was a slightly half baked interim RHI scheme.
Prior to April 2014, you can see that most of the incentive went to bio mass boilers and some GSHP.
You can use that MCS dashboard to come to exactly the same conclusion that I did. If you want to compare 2009 to 2024, the gap is even greater.
I don't believe FIT or any other government scheme prior to RHI could be utilised for heat pumps?
@@UpsideDownFork Unfortunately mate, I cannot argue the point as i dont have the data available, but i know i could have got some sort of 'Scottish' grant for ASHP and also Solar Thermal, depending on its output. I missed the deadline, because i waited so long for a Bgas quote for a CHP system, which was my preferred choice at the time. I cant remember what it was called. I just remember that my solar PV installation was finally done at £10K but i was getting several quotes between £16K - £20K all 'based on' what i could be earning back with FIT.
@@jimmaxwell2259 Ah, i'm not up to speed on all the Scottish policies which do always vary from us down here in England so you may have a good point.
Nicely done 👍
Thanks 👍
Good video but It would be useful to know the percentage of installations being done by the big energy suppliers vs the independent 'specialists' . My view would be that he average price being the same(ish) now is heavily being dragged down by the economies of scale available to the likes of Octopus and British Gas and how much control they have over the supply chain (i.e Octopus now manufacture their own pumps). you only have to look at China EV production to see how crucial this is to reducing prices to the consumer. I also think that the big energy firms have a lot of political pressure to make the Heat pump transition succeed and hence they are prepared to operate on very small profit margins for these installations also bearing in mind they have a massive income from energy supply in general.
Thanks for the comment!
I've been reliably informed by insiders that both British Gas and Octopus Energy are both installing heat pumps at a loss to date. They both aim to become profitable in 2025.
Not like for like but I had a quote for a Vailant Heat Pump in 2020, new cylinder and wall mounting the total price was £10500. Not gone back to them but recent finger in the air estimate from Octopus web site is £4500 after grants (so about £1500 more) and Heat Geek equivalent is £7500 after BUS and neither of them will be wall mounting for that. On a £12000 install they are roughly taking £4500 after materials, on £15000 instal they are taking £7500 after materials. Appreciate its all about supply and demand but I expect it is a very profitable business installing heat pumps right now.
Perhaps. Both BG and Octopus are running at a loss installing heat pumps at the moment. They expect to become profitable in 2025.
Plumber day rate is ~£350 per day now. How long did your installation take and how many men on site?
@UpsideDownFork I didn't go ahead with it as was more than I could afford (was doing house renovation) so needed the money elsewhere.
I suppose my older quote was 5 years ago and only £1500 different to octopus. Different ways can look at it I suppose.
I think when I get a heat pump I'll considering DIYing it as labour costs seems crazy and no one wants to wall mount them.
I can see the argument for price. Using your numbers. When the grant was £5k the average price was £12,706 and now with the grant being £7.5k the numbers are £12,960. So over that year the BOE calculator gives a figure of £12,977. So the average install is £17 less but the BUS grant is £2.5k more. So the average install is making £2483 more or about 20%. I'd say that's quite a lot.
The average prices are before the grant is factored in. So what's shown on the dashboard is the actual cost of installation, not the cost to the customer.
@UpsideDownFork Ah ok. But the money is being skimmed off. If you find somebody who had a quote last year and then had one now I bet it's not the difference in the BUS grant less (minus the tiny bit of inflation).
Be interesting to see if there is anybody here who did have a survey last year but decided against it but have decided to go for it this autumn for a real world comparison.
Did I feel guilty accepting the BUS Grant, No, most of us sitting in the middle have paid in more than enough tax during our working careers to pay this many times over, it's about time we finally receive a tiny rebate back on the money we have already paid out.
Thanks for commenting!
I think you missed a section on this video when looking at the costs. The technology around heat pumps has been around for a very long time especially when you consider air conditioners are heat pumps, why are the air to water heat pumps significantly more expensive to buy and install even without radiator upgrades.
I get there is a need for a hot water tank but £12k for a heat pump and dhw tank does seem excessive. How many people would even consider this route without the grant? So is the grant keeping the price higher than it would be without it, if the price has stayed the same over time, I know with inflation a stable product would increase in price but when the numbers of installs, installers and manufacturers are increasing yearly competition should be bringing the prices down.
The idea that this is a new, early adopter phase again isn't really true yes in the UK we have focused on gas boilers in homes but offices and businesses tend to install heat pumps in the form of ac units
This is not a UK specific challenge. I've been informed that A2W is a premium product in the USA, Germany and Scandinavia at least.
I can't tell you why that is. I would expect an uplift in price due to additional heat exchangers and some other bits and bobs but not as dramatic as the gap currently is.
Perhaps it's down to economies of scale. A2A is widespread EVERYWHERE in the world. A2W is still a very small niche overall.
Problem is your telling the truth, and you can’t shout and complain about the truth. Mainly because it’s always someone’s else’s fault and it’s always someone else wasting our money. Truth, analysis and common sense seems to have left these peoples brains, or maybe the truth doesn’t get clicks and watched.
Yep, a bit of all of that.
Don't you know it's all about control and I'm a shill for big government?! 😂
I don't buy the early adopter risks etc. This isn't new technology - we could easily develop building codes and best practices based on other European countries, but we don't like to admit that we're behind.
It should also be means tested. Like the winter fuel allowance, a millionaire shouldn't be getting fuel money to heat their pool.
The way to get adoption is to make it mandatory in the building code. Start with new builds, move onto landlords and building associations. People on low incomes, kids in fuel poverty, grannies on public pension etc, should get the grant money.
The NHS spends the yearly BUS amount everyday on needless postage stamps and envelopes I imagine 🤦♂
Jokes aside, this is no different to the Feed in Tariff - it worked to drive down PV cost but subsequently reduced in the amount paid for generation - I know people paying £15k for a 4kWp in 2011, I paid £7k in 2013 but am receiving less than half per kWh produced. The BUS is a one off upfront payment and cynically that money is simply being diverted into something that benefits all of society as every gas boiler that's replaced is XXXkg of CO2 less that is being contributed to the atmosphere - it also drives the heating industry to lower costs (hopefully) but importantly educates those jobbing plumbers that there are other opportunities for CPD and not just slinging in the biggest boiler they can find for an easy £2k - this is the long game that is being missed by those critical of such grants. The competition also ramps up so if one chancer quotes £££ there will be others who will compete - it's an interesting time to be watching from the sidelines...
Now instead of wasting money on postage for needless envelopes, if the NHS used that money wisely, just imagine how many extra nurses/doctors/hospitals could be employed/built or operations take place - it's the "big brain" thinking that's needed - not the "small brain" waste and envy that currently exists...
Thanks for contributing!
To ensure that all households can afford to replace a gas boiler with a heat pump, the BUS grant really needs to cover the full cost of installation. Otherwise, this tax-funded grant is only available to the more wealthy households.
Thanks for commenting!
The data doesn't seem to support that view. Have a closer look at the MCS dashboard and maybe investigate ECO4. You'll quickly find that the lion's share of heat pumps are being installed in less wealthy households.
Thats coz they are free on eco4 along with solar
@@markbeal2414I'd not heard of ECO4. Sadly it says for our house "Your rating score is:B
Due to the EPC rating of your property, your home's rating is unlikely to be improved by the measures we install". We certainly can't afford the £8k Heat Geek estimate an ASHP will cost us after BUS. Why are ASHP's so expensive?
Keep em coming I have never been as busy as I am now repairing air source heat pumps 😂 £££
What do I get out of this?! Start sending me some commission.
why did you put Roger into your thumbnail? he is not mentioned in the vid. 🤔 just casually click-beiting us?
Gouge away, you can gouge away
Stay all day if you want to
Missy aggravation, some sacred questions
You stroke my locks…
Octopus have joined up the gouging. My quote up 300% in a year. Who knows why. I should have dived in last year!
They have been installing heat pumps at a considerable loss and they are hoping to become profitable in 2025 so the increase in their pricing doesn't surprise me at all.
@@UpsideDownFork It seems to vary, our price actually reduced by £500 between our quote in Feb 24 and October 24?
hello, sir, can you reply to our emails please?
Having paid tax for fifty years then the government taking my fuel allowance and giving it to keep the boat people in nice warm hotels , would the same people who say it’s wrong to get the grant for heat pumps by calling them leaches what then are the boat people? Just my opinion nothing to do with being right or wrong, so many installations now have been highlighted for items that’s not needed with a heat pump installed be it buffer tanks or extra valves or vessels, basically the list is endless of items not needed with a heat pump , is it lack of knowledge maybe , is it justifying the cost of price of installation due to extra things which is no needed maybe , someone or possibly AI would be able to put house details in a program and out pops what’s needed be it what size heat pump that calculation of parts etc, when I see video after video of people saying not only have the installation have used parts not needed but by doing so it’s costing the homeowner more money the run the system. So taking the guesswork out of the installation itself of what they think is needed is probably the first step , please no reply is needed with the the words thanks for commenting seems somewhat ingenious = only my opinion.
Thanks for commenting!
Haha!
I do believe the industry is trending towards that philosophy of less is more, so your thinking is along the right lines.
No comment on the political aspect, I always get myself in trouble when I go down that rabbit hole!
@@UpsideDownFork At least the rabbits are warmer than the pensioners , like anything in life one tend to get cowboys that needs to be rounded up , personally until you get the guesswork or one might say slight of hand out of the industry then the uptake with more people complaining about the installation it’s going to take along time for people to decide it’s a good thing , I think the company or person where you can put your details in to a program such a kitchen planner that would be a step in the right direction, takes away the cowboys saying oh yes you need all of this stuff to work efficiently in reality probably only need a third.