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The funding is the first phase of the first phase of the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Heat Pump Readiness Programme.BEIS said Heat Pump Ready “supports the development of innovative solutions across the heat pump industry. “Heat pumps are a key solution for decarbonising homes and are critical to achieving the UK’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.”
A heat pump is a device that works in reverse like a refrigerator, transferring heat from the air or ground outside the building to the inside of the building through the circulation of refrigerant.
For example, in the case of an air source heat pump, the thermal energy from the atmosphere – although it may be cooler than the air inside the building in question – is still warm enough to evaporate the liquid refrigerant into a gas.
This gas then passes through a compressor, which increases the pressure of the gas and at the same time causes its temperature to rise.
The heat from the gas can then be used to heat the building while the refrigerant cools and returns to its original liquid state, starting the process all over again.
According to BEIS, Stream 1 of the Heat Pump Ready program is designed to foster innovative, optimized solutions to provide the most cost-effective and high-density domestic heat pump deployment.
It is hoped that the program will provide insights into how heat pump installations integrate with energy networks, supply chains and the way they interact with customers.
Each of the 11 selected projects proposed methods aimed at providing consumers with an improved “worry-free” experience and reducing costs through the coordinated installation of heat pumps in high-density buildings.
Funding for the projects is being awarded using the Small Business Research Scheme approach – the Heat Pump Readiness Programme is part of the government’s £1bn net zero innovation programme, with two other £20m award streams expected.
The 11 projects selected for Stream 1 will be implemented in places including Bristol, Oxford, Newcastle and Sunderland, and run by organisations such as E.ON, Samsung and EDF.
Heat Pump Ready Newcastle, for example, will see areas of the city with large-scale heat pump capacity targeted for installation, while also helping Northern Powergrid identify areas where the city’s electricity infrastructure may need to be upgraded.
BEIS explained that project leader E.ON has innovative solutions to help remove barriers for consumers to install heat pumps.
They added: “The project will use drone and laser scanner technology to conduct future surveys to create digital twins of clients’ homes and gardens.
“This approach can greatly reduce measurement time and disruption to the customer’s day, and provide correct first-time data acquisition, improving the accuracy of customer heat pump designs and specifications.”
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Meanwhile, in Greenwich, Element Energy was awarded almost £200,000 for its “thermal infrastructure incentive electrification” or “TIME” project.
“This will be achieved by harnessing the power of networked heat pumps distributed over a shared ground array,” they explained.
“This project explores the potential to decouple the upfront capital cost barrier of ground installations from customers through financing similar to existing domestic service financing.
“And [it] aims to develop a way for consumers to replace their boilers with networked heat pumps in a way that is easy to understand and adopt, while minimizing disruption to the home.”
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