Trouble with heat pumps is that there's a lot of propaganda around them, and a lot of the antis are basing their arguments on old technology. For instance it was true that they used to only work well down to 5°C, but better refrigerants, inverters etc mean that they can now cope with well below freezing - they get used in Alaska, northern Canada, properly cold places.
For instance, here's
one keeping a house at 70-80F at an outside temperature of -27ºF (-33°C) in Minnesota. For comparison the all-time lowest temperature record in the UK is -17°F (-27.2°C) in the far north of Scotland - saying that heat pumps can't cope with low temperatures is pure propaganda. Not all of them can, true - but it's not the absolute problem that some antis try to make out.
Having watched a few videos i can honestly say i wouldn't touch one with a bargepole, all that upheaval to spend more money for less heat, as the guy says its ok then giving figures of 3 - 1 in summer who wants central heating in the summer months.
Propaganda based on old technology. Yes efficiency goes down in colder weather, but what matters is the average efficiency through the year. I know someone who on average, through the year, is getting 3.2kWh of heat for every 1kWh of electricity he puts in (CoP=3.2 in the jargon). Compare that with a gas boiler that gives maybe 0.9kWh of heat for every 1kWh of gas you put in, so you need your electricity price to be less than 3.55x your gas price for it to break even at the fuel level.
I imagine my current tariff is pretty typical in having electricity at 3.9x the underlying price of gas but the Energy Price Guarantee on gas but not electricity distorts the actual price I pay so that it's 6.3x. Whereas if I had electricity at the 33p mentioned above it would be just over 3x the price of gas even net of EPG.
And we're getting to the stage that now our electricity system is significantly decarbonised, all the green taxes are going to move from electricity to gas, shifting the balance further in favour of electricity.
He mentions this in the video i think he said due to Legionnaires disease they have to be regularly serviced i wonder how much they'll charge for that service.
But you already get your gas boiler serviced, right? And if you're worried about Legionnaires’ disease then you should be really worried about carbon monoxide poisoning given that you are more likely to die from carbon monoxide than Legionnaires’ (
40 per year from carbon monoxide in England & Wales, versus a
2007-16 median of 32 from Legionnaires', of which 75% had underlying conditions like heart disease etc). And Legionnaires’ disease is not specific to heat pumps, the bacteria can grow wherever there's hot water.
I'm sure these heat pumps work fine if the installation is done properly and especially if the house is built with them in mind but one of the problems with retrofits of them is the huge radiators you need. We certainly couldn't accommodate them in every room in our house.
You only need the big radiators because the flow temperature of traditional heat pumps is rather lower than gas boilers. But you're now starting to see high temperature heat pumps that can have flow temperatures in the 70-80°C range output by gas boilers, so you don't need to change radiators. Comes at a slight hit to efficiency, but you make that up by saving the cost of replacing your rads.
until we can produce enough renewables at a cost equivalent of gas, then it's a no from me.
That was the right question 20 years ago, when the UK was self-sufficient in gas. But for one thing, renewables are producing electricity cheaper than gas - way cheaper at the moment, but even if you start plugging in "normal" prices for gas then it's starting to look like it's still more expensive than even renewables + storage.
But in a world where the UK only produces half the gas it needs (and production is declining), the question should really be rephrased. In the last decade we've imported 402TWh of gas in an average year. Where will that much gas come from in future, and how much will it cost?
If the last year has taught us anything, it's that we need to think seriously about energy security and producing as much of our own energy as we can, because we can't rely on the international market being able to deliver the amounts we need, at a cost that won't trash the economy.