A consortium of innovators led by energy pioneers Chameleon Technology has secured government cash to smooth Britain’s installation of heat pumps. Reassuring consumers & speeding up uptake – which at present badly misses official expectations – are the group’s goals.
Chameleon Technology has allied with TalkTalk Telecoms, Evergreen Energy, University of Salford – Energy House, and the EnAppSys platform. The group have won a £763,000 grant from D-ESNZ to deliver the Total Home Optimisation Management (THOM) project.
THOM fosters supplier collaborations, en route to heat pump optimisation as part of the government’s Heat Pump Ready Programme. The latter aims to increase awareness among consumers of the technology’s cost savings and environmental benefits.
Installing a heat pump scares off too many buyers due to the length of process and detail needed in specifying projects. Simpler tools are the key: THOM intends to provide one.
The project sees Chameleon working with partners to produce insights on smart energy from existing home data.
Occupancy & energy data gathered by homes’ smart meters will feed development insights into a dwelling’s thermal efficiency before installation, with all outcomes gathered into AI solutions to streamline the heat pump installation, reduce any survey requirements, improve system performance and offer minimum impact to the energy consumer. This will increase customer & installer confidence over the technology in each installation.
Heat pump installations now seriously lag behind rates required to meet the Government’s target of 600,000 installations per year by 2028. In 2021, less than two per cent of UK homes had low-carbon heating systems, with around only 50,000 heat pumps installed that year.
For households looking to upgrade outdated, inefficient domestic boilers, the heat pump installation journey involves several engineer visits to assess the feasibility of a heat pump and correctly size the system. This evaluation process doesn’t always take into account the widely varying routines and lifestyles of different customers.
“More must be done to get the UK on track to achieve the Government’s Net Zero targets”, Mike Woodhall, CEO of Chameleon Technology pictured, commented:
“Our collaboration is just one of the many ways in which the heat pump programme can really gather the momentum it needs to deliver decarbonised heating – a key pillar in the realisation of Net Zero”.
