Heat Pumps Today

14 Heat Wayv, a UK energy technology company say "Microwave boilers offer a cheaper alternative as gas boilers are phased out and Heat pumps will be unaffordable for many consumers". Heat Pumps Set to Increase Home Heating Costs by 400% October | November 2021 With gas boilers due to be banned in new homes from 2025 to help cut CO 2 emissions, the proposed introduction of heat pumps as a low-carbon alternative will be too costly, according to the company’s Home Heating Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis. This concludes that the installation and use of heat pumps would cause a 400% increase in home heating costs for the average consumer. The promised reductions in annual fuel costs are overwhelmed by high acquisition and installation costs, with the total consumer expenditure set to be in excess of £45,000 over a ten-year period. The cost of installing heat pumps, at between £10,000 and £14,000, could severely impact the budgets of local authorities, housing trusts and other housing stock providers. New house builders, who will legally be forced to install zero-carbon alternatives to gas boilers from 2025 will face major cost increases if using heat pumps. The Home Heating TCO report has been published by Heat Wayv, a UK engineering company. The cost analysis report examines annual operating costs and amortised capital costs over 10- and 20-year periods, and includes costings based on standard electricity taris, o- peak taris and a blended tari rate that reflects typical usage. Hydrogen Boilers For comparison, the analysis also includes hydrogen boilers. High hydrogen fuel costs mean that these boilers could cost consumers £79,000 over a 20-year period. Hydrogen boilers have been proposed as a direct replacement for gas boilers. But, serious challenges in the national distribution of hydrogen and potential annual fuel costs of over £3,200 could make them both unavailable and unaordable to most consumers. Electrical Panel Radiators Home heating using electrical panel radiators also showed a three-times increase in cost compared to today’s gas boilers. While purchase and installations costs are relatively low for electrical panel heating, the high annual electrical bill given that they tend to be used at peak periods pushes the total cost up to up to £3,200 per year. Microwave Boilers It is suggested a low cost alternative to gas is the microwave boiler, which potentially has an annualised cost of £1,883 over 10 years when used across both standard and o-peak rates. It reduces further to £1,645 over its full 20-year lifetime. When used exclusively on o-peak electricity taris, microwave boiler costs are lower than gas boilers, with annual costs potentially over a 20-year period of £972 for microwave compared to £1,185 for gas. “The need to replace CO 2 belching gas boilers is beyond question, but we need to find solutions that are aordable for average families,” explains Paul Atherton, CTO of Heat Wayv. “From the analysis, there are clearly very dierent levels of costs for the dierent proposed solutions, but these costs are often not understood and not being debated. Some are simply unaordable, and we need to prioritise the solutions that will prove cost eective for British homes.” Heat Wayv has developed the world’s first microwave boiler, which provides home heating solutions with similar installation and running costs to existing gas boilers, (using twilight o-peak taris) but with zero carbon emissions. It’s suggested microwave boilers would eliminate up to 54 million tons of CO 2 emissions that are currently created annually by gas boilers in the UK, representing 14%* of the total CO 2 emissions in the UK and 29%* of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions that come from homes. O P I N I O N