Tag Archives: heat-pumps

22 April 2026 · 23:18

Will an Air Source Heat Pump (ASHP) cost more to run than your gas boiler?

If you read newspapers like The Telegraph or listen to campaigners like Dale Vince, you will get a very certain “Yes” in answer to this question. 

Yet it is not difficult to find experts who disagree. If you get a ‘Heat Geek’ trained heat pump engineer to install your heat pump, they’ll guarantee performance levels that mean you don’t need to pay more.

If you are now confused, you have every right to be. So how can diametrically opposed answers be arrived at from the same data?

Ah, there’s the rub, because it is not the same data. Dale Vince / Ecotricity use the worst case (old) performance figure for heat pumps and the best case performance figures for gas boilers [Ref. 4].  This report is rebutted in some detail in a Carbon Brief commentary [Ref. 5].

When combined with a very high unit price for electricity when compared to gas, it’s very easy to make heat pumps look bad.

When we use realistic, contemporary figures, the answer changes. We’ll come on to that below.

Firstly, it is important to realise that there are 4 parameters that determine whether a heat pump or gas boiler will be cheaper to run:

  • the unit price of electricity;
  • the unit price of gas;
  • the efficiency of the ASHP system;
  • and the efficiency of the gas boiler system,.

Note that when we talk about the ‘efficiency’ of a heating system it is important to realise that the overall efficiency of the system is made up of a number of elements:

  • the inherent efficiency of the heating source;
  • the effective operation of the heating source (e.g. using the lowest flow temperature you can use that still meets the heat demand; using ‘weather compensation’ to make sure it works only ever as hard as it needs to – no more, no less);
  • the heat distribution (e.g. sizing and quality of pipework);
  • and heat delivery (e.g. effective surface area of radiators, including fins, or other means).

When we talk about efficiency below we mean the overall efficiency of the system, which is what counts as that is what delivers heat to occupants of a dwelling. It is what they experience.

The ratio of the electricity unit price to the gas unit price is called the ‘spark gap’. In Sweden it is about 1 (i.e. no gap), whereas the UK is an outlier where the spark gap is currently over 4. It is especially bad in the UK when compared with other European countries, and is an outlier in Europe along with Belgium (see Note 1).

I’ve thought hard about how to visualise the issue. I steered well away from graphs as most people find graphs difficult.

The efficiency of a heat pump is often expressed  as a Seasonal Coefficient Of Performance (SCOP), measured by the heat energy delivered over a year divided by the electrical energy input (see Note 3). A boiler also has a SCOP, which is the heat delivered divided by the calorific energy of the gas input over a year. A heat pump will always have a much higher SCOP than a boiler because it harvests energy from the environment.

An old gas boiler like the 25 years old one I had until 4 years ago has a ‘list’ SCOP of 0.72 (72%), whereas a modern condensing gas boiler should be able to achieve 0.9 (90%). 

Heating engineers more often than not fail to properly install gas boilers (they set the flow temperature to a high temperature, and then it fails to ‘condense’ and that undermines its performance) [Ref. 2]

A study commissioned by the Energy Saving Trust found that in reality the average SCOP achieved with modern gas boilers was 0.83 (83%) [Ref. 1], well below 0.9.

Whereas for Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHPs), a lot of people (and Ecotricity / Dale Vince is no exception), rely on a 2021/22 Catapult study that found an average SCOP of 2.8 (280%) [Ref. 3].  These Catapult findings were criticised at the time, but are now increasingly seen as old and unreliable in what has been a maturing industry.

Heat pump experts would regard such a figure today as bad practice. Heat Pump Monitor is a live data feed for ASHP installs that follow good practice and they find an average SCOP of 4, as a Carbon Brief rebuttal of the Ecotricity report explains [Ref. 5]. This rebuttal includes the following quotation:

“Dale Vince has drawn some very strong conclusions about heat pumps from quite flimsy data. Like Dale, we’d also like to see electricity prices come down relative to gas, but we estimate that, from April, even a moderately efficient heat pump on a standard tariff will be cheaper to run than a gas boiler. Paired with a time-of-use tariff, a heat pump could save £280 versus a boiler and adding solar panels and a battery could triple those savings.” Madeleine Gabriel, Mission Director, A Sustainable Future at Nesta

And this does not rely of lots of insulation. My Grade 2 Listed, 200 year old home, that has minimal ‘fabric’ measures (sash window brushes and regulation loft insulation), achieves a SCOP of over 3.5 (350%) [Ref. 6]

The question then is not in my view “is the house cheaper to run with a well installed ASHP versus a well installed new gas boiler?”, but for those considering the move from an existing gas boiler and not wanting their bills to rise “will my bills rise in moving from my old gas boiler to a new ASHP?”. I did a little maths so you don’t need to [see Note 2 if you are curious], and the graphics that follow are the result.

Let’s take the spark gap that existed in the first quarter of 2026. It was an eye-watering 4.7. Now, depending on both the SCOP of the ASHP and the SCOP of the gas boiler, we’ll either pay the same or less (green coloured squares), or more (red colour squares), as we see in the matrix:

It shows that with this spark gap, moving from a 25 year old gas boiler with a SCOP of 0.75, would require the ASHP to have a SCOP of at least 3.5. If it was a new boiler being switched out, with a SCOP of 0.85, then the ASHP would then require a SCOP of 4, which is harder to reach but achievable.

With moving some of the costs that had been loaded on electricity to general taxation, the spark gap in April 2026 has reduced to 4.3. The picture changes:

Now we see more green squares meaning more cases where the transition will be running-cost neutral or better. Here, even assuming a boiler efficiency of 90% (SCOP of 0.9), we can run the heating cheaper with an ASHP with a SCOP of 4, which is perfectly achievable with a skilled heat pump engineer.

With the UK Government announcement [Ref. 8] regarding changing the way electricity is priced, to decouple it from the price of gas, the spark gap will reduce. It will take time for these changes to shake out, and it is a tweak to the current market not a fundamental re-design. Nevertheless, even without these changes, the increasing renewables capacity will mean that gas has less opportunities to set the price of electricity [see Note 4].

Combining the policy changes and increased capacity mean we should see a trend in the spark gap over the next few years.

Let’s go with a spark gap that is 3.8 in 2027, 3.0 in 2028, and 2.5 by 2030 as some have suggested; a mid-European goal that seems realistic [see Note 1].

A figure of 2.5 will still be more than several European countries, but given the efficiency of heat pumps, we do not need the spark gap to drop to the level of Sweden to achieve the transformational change in heat pump take-up that we need.

Let’s see how the picture may change, given a downward trend in spark gap, over the next few years:

The short answer is that it is perfectly possible today – using realistic numbers – to not pay more when moving from an old gas boiler to a heat pump.

It’s more challenging but not impossible to do so for a modern gas boiler with an efficiency of 85%. But no one is suggesting ‘ripping out’ a brand new boiler. There is plenty of work to be done phasing out existing boilers as they approach a natural end of life. They can then all be changed over in the next 10-20 years.

We just need to stop replacing old boilers with new boilers, locking in another 20 or 25 years of carbon emissions from burning natural gas.

It becomes increasingly easier to make the numbers work as the spark gap reduces. Within a few years, even using Ecotricity’s incredibly biased assumptions (assuming ASHP SCOP of 2.8 and boiler SCOP of 0.9) it will become impossible to make a heat pump’s running costs look worse even than the best boiler.

No doubt many will still repeat the myths about heat pumps that have been debunked by Carbon Brief [Ref. 7].

Householders, local authorities and businesses will by then all have moved on, having recognisd that heat pumps really are as good as they are cracked up to be.

© Richard W. Erskine, 2026

References

[1]  Final Report: In-situ monitoring of efficiencies of condensing boilers and use of secondary heating, energy saving trust, June 2019 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a75149be5274a3cb28697f7/In-situ_monitoring_of_condensing_boilers_final_report.pdf 

[2]  Why our condensing boilers do not condense, Jo Alsop, 5th March 2020, The Heating Hub https://www.theheatinghub.co.uk/why-our-condensing-boilers-do-not-condense 

[3]  Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project, Catapult Energy Systems, 8th January 2025 https://es.catapult.org.uk/project/electrification-of-heat-demonstration-project/ 

[4]  The Cold Hard Facts About Heat Pumps, A Green Britain Foundation Report, January 2026, https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-news/2026/new-report-exposes-the-cold-hard-truth-about-heat-pumps

[5]  Factcheck: What it really costs to heat a home in the UK with a heat pump, Simon Evans, 30th January 2026, Carbon Brief https://www.carbonbrief.org/factcheck-what-it-really-costs-to-heat-a-home-in-the-uk-with-a-heat-pump/ 

[6]  Heating a listed Cotswold stone building with an air-source heat pump: our journey, Richard Erskine, 29th March 2023, essays concerning.com https://essaysconcerning.com/2023/03/29/heating-a-listed-cotswold-stone-building-with-an-air-source-heat-pump-our-journey/ 

[7] Factcheck: 18 misleading myths about heat pumps, Jan Rosenow, 21 March 2023 (Updated 28 August 2025), Carbon Brief https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/heatpumps/index.html

[8] The era of clean energy security, Ed Milliband, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-era-of-clean-energy-security

NOTES

Note 1 – European ‘Spark Gap’

As the Climate Change Committee reported to Parliament in June 2025, there is a wide range of values for the spark gap across Europe from no gap at all in Sweden to outliers UK and Belgium with the highest spark gap (that rose again after this). Mid-range countries like Spain have a spark gap closer to 2.5, which is a reasonable target for the UK

Note 2 – Some Maths

There is not need to read this addendum unless you are interested in the underlying method used in develping the matrices.

Suppose the heat energy needed to heat a building over a year is denoted by H.

The for a heat pump with a SCOP (Seasonal Coefficient Of Performance) of SCOPe to deliver enough energy it will use Ee units of electricity such that

H = SCOPe x Ee

The same holds true for a gas boiler with a SCOP of SCOPg, and gas energy input of Eg

H = SCOPg x Eg

The cost of heating with the heat pump will depend of the unit cost of electricity Ue and the electricity used, Ee.

Cost(e) = Ue x Ee

The cost of heating with the boiler will depend of the unit cost of gas Ug and the gas used, Eg.

Cost(g) – Ug x Eg

We want to have a running cost for the heat pump that is less than or equal to the gas boiler, so

Cost(e) <= Cost(g)

Using the previous equalities that means

(Ue x H) / SCOPe <= (Ug x H) / SCOPg

This relationship doesn’t depend on H (it can be cancelled out) because we are looking at the relative cost of a heat pump and cost boiler for a given house, so we want

Ue / SCOPe <= Ug / SCOPg

Rearranging we find we need

Ue / Ug <= SCOPe / SCOPg

The left hand side is the ‘spark gap’ so we need

‘Spark gap’ <= SCOPe / SCOPg

or equivalently,

SCOPe / SCOPg > ‘Spark gap’

And that is why I used the table with SCOPe on one axis and SCOPg on the other and the ratio SCOPe/SCOPg as the intersecting squares, coloured green if indeed the ratio is greater than ‘Spark gap’, which in plain english means …

‘when the relatively higher efficiency of the heat pump (compared to a gas boiler) overrides the relatively high unit price of electricity (compared to gas)’

Note 3

Technically, SCOP traditionally was used in a narrow sense of the calculated efficiency of the heat pump, and SPF (Seasonal Performance Factor) was used to represent the measured overall efficiency of the system. However, the usage of the SCOP term is now ubiquitous and almost without exception used to represent the actual (measured) efficency of the system overall. So, before I get called out by any pedants out there, and remembering this is a piece for the lay person, I’m following the current popular usage of SCOP.

Note 4

We have a ‘marginal pricing’ or ‘meit order’ way of princing electricity. Every half hour, the price of electricity is set by the most expensive unit to come on line. There was good logic to that. It meant that expensive to run but crucial back-up energy was there as a backstop as needed. This is explained here: Energy UK Explains: Why marginal pricing is the cheapest way to run our electricity market, EnergyUK, 27th March 2026 https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/publications/energy-uk-explains-why-marginal-pricing-is-the-cheapest-way-to-run-our-electricity-market/

However, this can mean that if low cost wind provides all the electricity we need for 29 minutes in a 30 minute window, and high cost gas comes in for the last minute, the price of electricity for the whole 30 minutes is charged at the higher price.

The issue now is that grid constraints mean we are often needing to curtail wind from Scotland or North Sea, needed in the south of UK, for example. As renewables further increase the percentage of power they deliver to the grid, and as electricity demand increases with the growth of EVs and heat pumps, there’s a clear need to reform the market.

The latest Government announcements are not a fundamental change, but are a positive step that should reduce the indefensiblly high spark gap that has existed for too long.

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26 October 2025 · 15:55

Mind the ‘Spark’ gap

All the talk of the ‘spark gap’ – the particularly high ratio of electricity unit prices to gas unit prices – might deter people from getting a heat pump, because they think it will mean they will pay more for their heating than they do currently, but this is false in the majority of situations where householders are end-of-lifeing their old gas boiler.

Let’s run the numbers.

  • Take a building that currently that consumes 30,000 kWh of gas for heating per year.
  • At a gas unit price of 6p/kWh that totals £1,800 per year (for the moment, ignoring standing charges for simplicity)
  • Let’s assume the old gas boiler is 75% efficient (in many cases with will be quite optimistic).
  • So, building actually needs 22,500 kWh of heat reaching radiators (0.75 x 30,000 = 22,500).

So the question is, can a heat pump be cheaper to run with its high relative performance that counteracts the ‘spark gap’? Let’s see …

  • Let’s assume a reasonable minimum achievable heat pump system SCOP of 3.5
  • So heat pump needs 6,429 kWh of electricity to produce 22,500 kWh of heat ((22,500 / 3.5) = 6,429)
  • At a electricity unit price of 22p/kWh that totals £1,414 per year 
  • That is a saving of £386 on running costs

Health Warning: The difference is very sensitive to the ‘spark gap’ (ratio of electricity to gas unit prices), and crucially the SCOP. 

Now, I am not saying there is not an issue with the ‘spark gap’. Adoption rates in Europe show that the smaller the spark gap, the high the adoption of heat pumps (see ‘Figure 2.4 Comparison between the heat pump market share, the number of heat pumps installed, and electricity and gas price ratio for countries in Europe in 2023’, Progress in reducing emissions – 2025 report to Parliament, 25 June 2025).

However, when people talk about the spark gap they seem to assume the context is ‘buy a new gas boiler or buy a heat pump’. Needless to say that is a higher bar but not an insurmountable one. Many people who are concerned about climate change and have an ageing gas boiler simply want to know that their heat bills will not rise.

Now back to standing charges. I rerun the numbers for different SCOPs and included standing charges (see NOTES for assumptions). The ‘breakeven’ SCOP is then close to 2.9, which frankly only an incompetent heat pump installer would fail to exceed.

And what is more, for any of these SCOPs the carbon saving is at least 4 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. So both the planet and the bank balance can be happy with the choice.

So, let’s fix the spark gap, but stop banging on about it as though it is a reason not to press on with rolling out heat pumps.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2025

NOTES

Assumptions used in table: With heat demand of 22,500 kWh and old gas boiler with efficiency of 0.75 (75%), so gas bill showing 30,000 kWh primary energy used by gas boiler. Used standing charges of 28p and 59p per day for gas and electricity, and unit rates of 6p/kWh and 22p/kWh, respectively. The breakeven running costs SCOP in this case is 2.935. Also, a carbon intensity of gas of 184 gCO2/kWh and for UK electricity grid (for 2024) of 124 gCO2/kWh; so even at a SCOP of 2.5 you save 4.37 tonnes of CO2 a year.

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06 January 2025 · 13:38

Saving Money with an Air Source Heat Pump in an old house – 2024 Report

I have written a while ago about the project to replace a 25 year old creaking gas boiler with an Air Source Heat Pump. Today we had our annual service provided by Cotswold Energy Group, the original installer. All clear for another year.

The main advice we follow is not to fiddle with the as-installed setup at all – we let it do its thing! We don’t even adjust the controls (TRVs) on radiators because the system was well ‘balanced’ as part of the commissioning of the system. The only thing I look at periodically is the performance data via my phone or PC. If there was some malfunction it would no doubt show up in a drop in weekly performance data. Mostly we forget the system is there.

So I thought I’d just provide a summary of the 2024 performance and running costs.

Summary

A recap. Our house is a large semi-detached dwelling with a total floor area of 251 m² over three floors. It has solid walls [1], and mostly sash single glazed windows. Only the loft insulation and brushes on sash windows are additional retrofit ‘fabric’ measures [2].

The total heat delivered to the house over the last 12 months (directly metered from pipes flow and return gauges) was 29,236 kWh (kilowatthours), and that was achieved with the input of 7,942 kWh of electricity (again, using dedicated metering). So the annual performance (the so called Seasonal Coefficient Of Performance, Seasonal COP or SCOP) is found by dividing the first number by the second, giving a SCOP of 3.68 for 2024. That can be thought of as an efficiency (output divided by input) of 368%. This apparently magical feat (obtaining an efficiency of greater than 100%) is achieved because the heat pump harvests energy from the ambient environment (in our case, the air), and concentrates it to raise its temperature.

Looking at data on a monthly basis, I found that the worst month was January with a COP of 3.06. There will be days when it was worse than this but even on a daily basis it rarely drops below 2.5; for just a handful of days in the year.

If we’d stuck with our old boiler which optimistically ran at 72% efficiency [3], then the primary energy required (in form of gas) would be equivalent to 40,606 kWh (that is 29,236 divided by 0.72).

The result of this is that we are saving about £480 a year as a result of ditching the old boiler, and also achieved a more comfortable evenly heated home (rather than the roller-coaster heating we had with the gas boiler).

With the old system, hot water to our shower came via a gravity fed system and needed a little pump to improve the pressure (noisy, and pressure not that great). With the heat pump and new water tank we now get our hot water under mains pressure. This was one of the most surprising benefits of our move to a heat pump system.

Running cost comparisons

Taking the unit prices for gas and electricity that applied for us for the most of 2024 (5.9p/kWh and 22.7p/kWh, respectively), and the standing charges (28.21p/day and 58.63p/day, respectively), the cost of heating (mainly space heat, but some water heat too) was £2,017 in 2024.

Had we stayed with our old gas boiler, it would have been about £2,500 to do the same job. Probably more because the system was creaking and unlikely to have performed according to the published performance figures [3].

Conclusion

Yes, you can heat any old building with a heat pump without having to make any significant or disruptive changes to the insulation.

Of course, where you can add insulation to a house heated by a gas boiler you can reduce the rate of heat loss and therefore the heating bills. The same is true of heating with a heat pump. But you will find that as you try to reduce the heat loss further and further, the costs will escalate, as I discussed in Insulate Britain: Yes, But by How Much?.

No, it wasn’t difficult to install (whatever ‘noises off’ you may hear from the perenially sceptical ‘You & Yours’ [4], and other naysayers), if you engage professionals with the experience, as you would do for any important job.

We remain very happy with our Air Source Heat Pump and our suppliers. We have a more comfortable house, that is cheaper to run than the boiler it replaced (even given the unjustifiable ratio of electricity/gas unit costs), is very reliable, and we have better showers.

No fiddling, or ‘intelligent home’ tech, required. Keeping it simple.

What’s not to like. You won’t regret it.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2025

NOTES

[1] The 200 year old walls are termed ‘solid’, but are actually two course of Cotswold stone with in-filled rubble, providing an element of air gap. The overall wall thickness at ground level is about 600mm. This kind of wall tends to perform better than is often assumed.

In fact, more generally, the heat loss from traditional buildings can be up to three times lower than expected (prior to that found in a 2010 research report, ‘The U-values of Traditionally Built Walls’, Caroline Rye, Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), October 2010.)

[2] I get a little frustrated with the question “is your home insulated?” If one lives in an imaginary house with no roof or walls then the answer would be no! The fact is that any structure that is enclosed provides insulation. The question is really shorthand for “has any insulation been added to the fabric of the building above and beyond the original construction?”. Most people now have some form of loft insulation which wasn’t original, but it is worth ensuring you have it up to the recommended depth (but going much beyond that is not really needed as there is a law of diminishing returns). Draught-proofing is a really good idea, as it reduces the air turnover in the house, improves comfort levels near windows and doors, and is relatively inexpensive. Extraction fans in kitchens and bathrooms are also important, both in reducing the risk of mould, but also because moist are needs more energy to warm it!

[3] You can find out the estimated efficiency of your old boiler using the Product Characteristics Database search function. Our old boiler was a Glow-worm Hideaway 120B. I’ve taken the slightly higher figure presented for winter of 72% (rounded), even though this is likely to be optimistic for a 25 year old boiler.

[4] ‘You & Yours’ is BBC Radio 4’s consumer affairs programme https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qps9 – Today (6th Jan 2025), during a segment about heat pumps we heard about the forthcoming new homes standard, and research being done with Barretts and Salford University. I was astonished to hear that with their new build standards they were seeing a performance, for the air-source heat pumps used to heat the new home (they were referring to the SCOP), of 3. That’s right, worse than our 200 year old house! For new homes, I would suggest a SCOP of 4 is an absolute minimum target, and I’m sure that those clever chaps at Heat Geek would be aiming for 5.

The researchers also “discovered” that the efficiency of heat pumps improves if they are kept on rather than used like gas boilers (being put on on the morning for a few hours and then again in the afternoon). Who knew? Anyone who has any knowledge or expertise in heat pumps, that’s who. With our house, the thermostat in the living room is set to 21C from 0630-2230 and setback to 18C from 2230-0630. The heat pump works only as hard as it needs to (based on the external temperature) to achieve this goal, and does this by changing the ‘flow temperature’ as needed. In our system the maximum design flow temperature of 50C is only for the very coldest days (perhaps a few days a year). In my house over the last month it has averaged about 35C and only once gone above 40C (a few days ago it was 42C).

It then discussed the use of radiant heating for those small dwelling “unsuitable” for a heat pump! I know that Nathan Gambling of BetaTalk would probably be jumping up and down at this point! The Air to Air kind of Air-Source Heat Pumps can be quite compact systems, and can be fitted to any dwelling. For a small flat, at a lower cost than a gas boiler. Direct electric heating may have a niche role is super-efficient PassivHaus’s, we’ll see, but it is not true to claim that heat pumps cannot be used in small dwelling.

So I haven’t a clue about the quality of the research referred to, but based on this admittedly brief segment, it did raise some concerns as to the research brief. And it is clear that the producers and lead presenter on You & Yours are still unable to accept that heat pumps are the primary game in town, so they will continue to find ways to sow doubts.

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05 December 2023 · 16:44

Heat pumps conspiring to keep EV drivers snug in snow drifts, whatever next!?

There are no shortage of myths and memes that attack EVs and Heat Pumps, particularly in the pages of The Telegraph and other right wing outlets. It’s a curious phenomenon, railing against thermodyanmics.

There is of course an inevitable transition to a clean, electrified and decarbonised world. The goal of naysayers is not to stop it happening (they are not that silly), merely to delay the inevitable for as long as possible. That’s what the fossil fuel lobby wants to achieve – wringing out as many dollars as they can before the bubble bursts; before assets are stranded.

There are several myths about EVs and Heat Pumps that are widely shared. These have been refuted many times, such as in these plain English pieces on the Nailsworth Climate Action Network website: myths about EVs and myths about heat pumps.

One I hadn’t seen before popped up on my social media timeline. It suggested that if EVs got caught out in a snowdrift, the batteries would get cold, so couldn’t work, and occupants would freeze, whereas those in petrol/diesel cars would be OK with their idling fossil fuel powered engines.

I can imagine The Telegraph readers – fed on a daily diet of hit jobs on any clean tech – chuckling at the idea of EVs freezing up in the snow.

The truth is quite the opposite. This meme is just another lie powering another social media storm; another myth to add to a growing list. Reuters provides a great factcheck refuting the points being shared widely across social media. Reuters quoted Professor David Howey from the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science:

“Electric vehicles use very little power when stationary … the motor doesn’t consume power at zero speed … only the car electronics and heating/cooling systems use power when the car is stationary, and the amounts are relatively small … [and could run climate settings for] at least a day, probably many days”

Dr Katherine Collett, was also quoted, saying of EVs that “Many of them are installed with very efficient heating systems nowadays” 

But it gets better, because the “very efficient heating system” being referred to is – hold onto your hats – a heat pump. This means that both the car’s battery and car interior are kept snug by a heat pump; and just as for home heating, that means electrical supply stretches further. A heat pump can turn one unit of electrical energy (in an EVs case, from a battery) into a few units of heat energy, as explained here. If you had a resistive heater for the EV that would keep you warm for so many hours [1], with the heat pump it could be 3 times as long that you would stay warm.

The efficiency of EVs and Heat Pumps, and the future-proofing that electrification enables, means that The Future Is Electric.

This will all probably make The Telegraph readers heads explode.

Their bete noirs – EVs and heat pumps – are now conspiring to keep EV drivers snug in snow drifts long after the petrol heads have started to freeze because their fuel has run out.

Stuck in a storm of disinformation about EVs and heat pumps, this is the perfect cautionary tale on what not to believe, for those who have been misled by a right wing propaganda machine. A machine in part funded by fossil fuel interests and in part motivated by misplaced culture wars ideology.

My advice is, don’t get caught in yet another bullshitstorm of disinformation, get off social media and the papers, and hunt down genuine experts. They’re not exactly hard to find.

(c) Richard W. Erskine, 2023

Notes

[1] In one test an older Tesla that had resistive power heater (so not with a heat pump) and at about -10C, it was found that “No surprise, but the Tesla is vastly more efficient, burning 1.6 kWh per hour versus the Hyundai sucking gas at the rate of 10.3 kWh per hour”, and both the Tesla (2019) and Hyundai were able to maintain a comfortable internal tem[erature for nearly 2 days .

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