Heat pumps are finally beginning to fulfil their promise as the future of heating. Graham Wright, Sanyo's technical manager and head of the company's heating division, reports on the accelerating roll-out of a new technology.
IT IS now widely accepted that heat pumps offer significant advantages over conventional means of heating for buildings. The combination of rising energy costs, climate change, and doubts over the long-term continuity of natural gas supplies, have created a unique opportunity for our industry to lead the introduction of this highly efficient form of heating into the future.

It is a technology the ac industry is uniquely equipped to handle. With a compressor at its heart, and familiar components such as indoor unit and outdoor condensing unit, it is familiar territory for engineers keen to expand their businesses into a new and highly lucrative area.

The take-up in response to the recent roll-outs of heat pump-based heating systems by the major manufacturers has been extremely encouraging. The market reaction to the launch of our own ECO CO2 heat pump heating system has taken even us by surprise.

To their credit, distributors and installers have been quick to see the potential. From a standing start a few months ago, there are now five centres offering specialist training in CO2 heat pump technology across the UK. By the end of the year, they will have trained several hundred approved installers, all equipped to handle the technology in the field.

We believe it is vital to provide specialist training to ensure installers are fully up-to-speed with all aspects of the technology. Although based on a vapour compression cycle, there are distinctive and perhaps slightly unusual aspects to the design and application that must be understood in order to get the best out of it.

This is why we have made it a requirement for engineers to attend and complete one of our CO2 heat pump training courses before being entitled to install or service the system.

History

The history of heat pump technology in the UK provides some valuable lessons on how we should approach the roll-out today. The first experience of heat pumps in the sixties and seventies was not exactly a text book example of how to introduce a new technology to market.

As those with long-enough memories (and grey-enough hair) will remember, in the face of a global oil crisis and spiralling energy prices there was a receptive market desperate for more efficient solutions. Heat pumps, even in their early incarnations, offered a major step forward.
Despite the huge market potential, however, that early promise was not fulfilled - due mainly to poor implementation and a basic lack of understanding of how to translate a good design into a workable, efficient solution on the ground.

The result was that the surge of interest in this promising new approach turned rapidly to disappointment, as the technology was not seen to deliver.

Today, the world has obviously moved on. Products have been refined and improved many times over. The fundamental requirement, however, to ensure that the product is applied correctly, and meets the needs of the specific application, remains. This is true of building services systems in general, and heat pumps in particular. When applied correctly, they are a highly efficient solution and deliver superb performance and energy efficiency.

Matching demand

An important issue to consider on an application is peak hot water demand. A standard-size household combi-boiler will struggle to meet the demands of five power showers turned on at the same time. Likewise with a heat pump system. The key is to evaluate the requirements of an application at the outset, and ensure the solution can meet the anticipated need.

Our experience so far suggests that the standard system can cater for between 80 to 90% of all applications, without modification or addition. Where there are significantly higher hot water requirements, there are a number of simple ways of catering for this.

Where a high hot water demand is expected, temperature-controlled electric heaters can be used to boost the water temperature from the heat pump to enable the system to cope with the transient peak demand. Alternatively, a back-up storage tank can be used, which operates on low cost Economy 7 electricity overnight or Economy 10 during the day.

The general rule of thumb is, two simultaneous showers or bath fillings is an acceptable load; three or more will require back-up. This is no different to increasing the size of a traditional gas-fired boiler to meet higher domestic demand. The key is to recognise the issue at the outset and cater for it.

The early feedback has confirmed our hopes for the new system. It works very well in UK conditions, and in hundreds of installations across the country, homeowners and small businesses are saving serious money on their fuel bills.

Distributors and installers have embraced the system and report keen interest from customers looking for a greener solution that saves money.

This is being translated into substantial sales - in a completely new sector of business.
We are not only confident that heat pumps are a technology whose time has come. We believe that the future of the heating market belongs to this industry.