Two Underestimated Heating Efficiency Solutions

The recent energy price cap announcement by Ofgem is estimated to mean 9 million UK households will be in fuel poverty (End Fuel Poverty, 2022) . The drive to decarbonise UK heating must continue to accelerate to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels for decarbonisation and energy security purposes. However, in order to deliver a just-transition, the need to reduce fuel demand and protect fuel poor households must also rise to the forefront. Government funding to consumers such as the council tax rebate are, unfortunately, a short term fix which does not address the root of the problem. A long term solution that address long term decarbonisation, consumer health and wellbeing, and energy security is heating efficiency. However, as the CCC (2022) agrees, there is a significant shortfall in the UK Government’s action for energy efficiency.

Amongst a number of energy efficiency solutions such as insulation of the house and smart meter installation, we would like to highlight two which are heavily underestimated:
• Hydraulic balancing
• Pump efficiency
Ensuring that these meet quality standards are crucial to protecting customers' energy bills, reducing carbon emissions, increasing water and energy efficiency, and ensuring that the systems are long lasting.

Hydraulic balancing
We must encourage installation best practice in the 1.7m boiler retrofits by mandating hydraulic balancing.

Heating systems cannot work to optimum levels if the system is not properly balanced, resulting in higher heating costs, greater emissions than expected and less comfort. Unbalanced systems can result in radiators not heating up property, causing hot and cold spots to emerge within a property (BEIS, 2021). This often leads to the user turning the boiler temperature up in order to try and get the cold room temperature up, causing the boiler not to condense. In addition, unnecessarily higher return water temperatures reduce the operational efficiency of the heat source, whether this be a boiler or heat pump.


Pump Efficiency
We must mandate high standards of pump quality and pump systems during heating system installations.
While it is important to encourage the deployment of low carbon heating solutions such as heat pumps, technology needs to work optimally to deliver success. This will help to ensure that fuel bills are as low as possible and that customer satisfaction is high.

Hydraulic Balancing Benefits:
Hydraulic balancing can deliver energy savings of around 7.8% (Cho, Cabrera, and Patel, 2019). Prior to the recently announced October price cap, the savings due to hydraulic balancing (on average) was £69 per year, from October, this will rise to £156 per year.
Industry consensus is that the average cost of hydraulic balancing can vary from £60-£120 based on the time required to complete the balancing of the heating system. Therefore, balancing is an investment that pays back quickly, and its economics for consumer will tend to improve as energy prices increase.

Pump Efficiency Benefits:
Poorly designed pumping strategy can affect the Seasonal Co-efficiency of Performance (SCOP) of a heat pump by as much as 0.3 (or 10% of well performing heat pumps). With considerations of the October price cap update, a 10% drop in SCOP of 3 would add £212 to the annual bill of an average property (11,000kWh demand, electricity price 52p/kWh). Examples of this include pumps not being optimised so they run for longer and at a constant speed, or adding additional pumps to the system to achieve flow rather than resizing.