That appears to conflict with the comparison data here..
http://www.nottenergy.com/energy-costs-comparison3
..but the difference could well be down to assumptions made about different tarrif rates. Notts has them on level pegging at the moment.

Edit: There is a note here..
http://www.jwilloughby.fsbusiness.co.uk/dfpg0804.htm
that says "Price relative to gas now distorted by new two tier tariffs and no standing charges. Second tier used for relative prices."

Total newcomer to all this and have read with fascination and alarm all your entries regarding GSHPs, Biomass boilers, and wind and solar power. I seek the holy grail of a sensible energy solution to a 210 sq m new build on a farm, in a field, in chalk downland - total clean slate but huge confusion! Return on investment is a consideration but even more is the feeling that I've done the best for the next generation - bit syrupy but true - there must be a sensible answer to my query as surely every new build must ask the same question?!
Rip Kirby

What if you run your heat pump on cheap rate (E7 or E10 periods only) to heat up a tank of water and draw down on the tank for heating and hot water requirements? That's cheaper than gas. Could it be done and what would the equipment cost?

Interesting to note that coal seems to be hardly any worse than oil for producing CO2 yet is less than half the price. I'm not a fan of gas (or oil) for heating, or for any other purpose, for energy security reasons.

Posted By: (GBP) KeithI'm just worried that people with good intentions are being led along by the nose and being talked into believing that heat-pumps are renewable energy generation equipment whereas in reality they are not.

Ah now surely that is just the tip of the iceberg, I've had like for like quotes of £20k+ through to ~£5k.

Come on guys -- for goodness sake build well enough insulated buildings so you dont need heating systems!! Design the jolly thing out.

Sounds good funcrusher, but I didn't understand what the relevance was.

I agree it should not be on the grant list. A friend of my just showed me the plans for his extended house. His 'green' architect specified a heat pump for his underfloor heating, which in the new extension is fine (highly insulated floor with thermal mass), but for the old part of the house he's used oversized radiators. The architect is still proposing 4:1 returns - something he clearly wont get in that configuration. Mind you, I also noticed from the plans that his 'green' architect has specified the minimum required levels of insulation etc... so perhaps 'green architecture' is the latest marketing fad and consumers are being duped slightly into buying these technologies in a bid to appear green?

Perhaps though the grants could be kept if a minimum of 4:1 ratio can be proven? It would ensure good design and use only when appropriate.

Like a few others I don't think there should be any grants. Can you get a nearly £2,500 grant towards external wall insulation for an existing property? Which might save over 10,000kWh/£1000 per year on heat source/house size, or drop emmissions by 5-10 tonnes. Nope. Yet you can get £2,500 for a PV system which will save you £80 a year on your electric bill and reduce emmissions by less than a tonne. I think the grants should be carbon based. In arrears: aka feeder tariffs but on how much carbon you didn't emit that year because of whatever technology you had installed. So things like insualtion will be the natural winners in terms of payback. It might be a bit complicated to adminster though.

Right now the LCBP should be about demand reduction not alternative sources of energy. So that whatever alternative energy comes along in future we need less of it.

Keith I agree financially that a gas condensor will be best (on install costs alone), but it misses a point. If you've insualted, updated your tank to a thermal store to allow heating support, what heating source can you use which puts hot water in it and doesn't emit carbon? I don't count wood as carbon neutral as the tree it came from might have lived for another 50 years if it hadn't been cut down (even if you are using the waste wood from pallets/sawmills etc). They fit somewhere between fossils and real renewables - but not as close to solar/HW and PV / wind wave. And the key point - burning wood does emit carbon.

People don't buy a Audi/BMW/Jag/Mercedes becuase they are cheaper! Given the number of them on the roads I presume there are a lot of people who want the "best" heating system, not the chepaest to run. Whether a heatpump is "best" is subject to debate.

I see a use for heat pumps as a demand shifter - using off peak, "spare capacity" like Chris has mentioned to fill up an accumulator using off peak green (or even nuclear or worse case coal) electric. Interesting - that no one offers a "nuclear only" tariff yet ;-). It does mean that you need to oversize the ground loop possibly - but again demand reduction should be the first step. You may only need to run the heatpump say 30-40 days per year if you get the insulation right.

The big problem is that we are using [loads of] gas to generate electricity in powerstations. Which reduces the end to end to about 60%. Instread we should stop doing that and use gas for heating purposes and stick to coal for electric generation [with CCS of course] and use heatpumps to bring the end to end efficiency up to 100-150%.

Simon.

Keith where did you get the 5:1 figure from? That seems to low? I thought it was more like 2.5:1 for coal and 3:1 for gas. If you look at this diagram the total for electric generation is around 90 million on tonnes oil equiv in, vs 33 out...

http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file11248.pdf

That's saying only 20% of the energy in a lump of coal ends up as electricity.

The numbers may be skewed if you add in extraction and shipping - becuase you'd have to increase those losses if you gave the fuel to the end users. They'd be getting lorries to drop individual sacks of coal off, and not having trains/container ships full of the stuff delivered in bulk.

Sorry if I'm straying from the point for a second, but I have to question the figures on the original web site - according to John Willoughby, Electricity produces 0.42 kg CO2/KWh, but Coal produces only 0.32 kg CO2/KWh (Anthracite). Is this on the assumption that the electricty is generated in a coal fired power station, and that transporting it to your home produces further emissions? I'm amazed to see the figure for coal being as low as it is, but the electricity figure seems correspondingly high...

Albert - I went to an agricultural show at the weekend and saw some magnificent Suffolk Punch horses. Coming from Yorkshire I didn't like the inference that they were better than Shires because they didn't need a midday feed to work but I was aghast to learn that there are more Giant Pandas in the world than this breed of horse. Bring back the coal wagon - or what about using them for Tesco grocery deliveries?

So it's worth doing sometime but, right now, there are better things to be spending resources on?

The first thing to do should be to reduce demand. This will always have the best return. However, some climates, like my own, are virtually impossible to reduce demand down to zero. In these cases, a heatpump is good solution IMHO, especially when used in collaboration with "low grade" sources of heat as it can make them usable.

Paul in Montreal.

I worry when you get black and white statements from government saying that heat pumps reduce your CO2 emissions. From reading the forums and other things, it seems like GSHP's efficiency is overstated, at least for domestic use. You might get people replacing gas boilers with GSHP and so making their emissions worse than if they'd bought a condensing boiler. They probably reduce your emissions if you replace an oil boiler though.

We should consider the problem of grid capacity as well. I don't think it is a good idea to add to peak load electricity demand, particularly if you already have a gas supply to your property. However, if you can run the heat pump at off-peak times to heat up a store of water then it's worth considering and could be cheaper to run.