Ground Source Heat Pumps Climate change is at the forefront of everybody’s mind at the moment. It is our responsibility to change our habits for the better and to reduce our carbon footprint and stop using the planet’s natural resources and fossil fuels like oil, gas and LPG. One realistic alternative which provides a green sustainable source of renewable energy is a ground source heat pump. A heat pump takes geothermal energy from the earth by using either trenches or boreholes that are drilled into the ground and extract heat via heat transfer. Installing an RHI eligible technology provides many benefits both financially and in terms of reducing your carbon footprint. It is imperative that you buy a ground source heat pump from an installer that is accredited by the microgeneration certification scheme like Cotswold Energy Group. MCS accredited installers are qualified to design, supply and install and have to pass rigorous qualifications and be part of a consumer code like RECC – the renewable energy consumer code. Heat pumps provide heating and hot water for domestic and commercial properties and can generate domestic renewable heat incentive (RHI) subsidy and payments payable directly to you over 7 years. The maximum subsidy for a domestic ground source heat pump is in the region of £35,000 paid quarterly directly to your bank account and is totally tax free and not financial means tested. The payments are index linked to CPI which means that your payments will increase over time. You can make significant carbon savings by installing GSHP technology and the process to install the heat pump is very simple and straightforward. The government are pushing towards removing fossil fuels from the domestic market paving the way for clean, renewable energy sources like ground source heat pumps. Air Source Heat Pumps We should all be concerned about climate change and finding new ways to save energy. If you live in an area where you are using fossil fuels like mains gas, oil or LPG you should be thinking about ways to reduce your carbon footprint and move to renewable energy sources like air source heat pumps. ASHP technology has improved a lot in the last 5 years and now the units are cheap, quiet and easy to install. People who install air source heat pumps can also benefit from the government’s renewable heat incentive (RHI) program. It is a scheme which provides financial subsidy and incentive to anybody who installs an air source heat pump at their property. It is available for both domestic and commercial customers. For domestic installations it uses the deemed heat requirement which is available from your EPC certificate to determine how much RHI funding is available. For ASHP the RHI subsidy is capped at roughly £11,500 which is also the average price for a heat pump. This essentially means that you can get a free heat pump from companies like Cotswold Energy Group who are experts at design supply and installation. They are also fully accredited to commission, service and maintain heat pumps to ensure that customers qualify for the RHI subsidy. Air Source Heat Pumps use some electricity to run and their efficiency is measured by using a scale called coefficient of performance or COP. This COP measures how many kW of heat are generated by using 1kW of electricity, for example a COP of 3.87 is effectively 387% efficiency as the heat pump uses 1kW of electricity to create 3.87kW of heat. Most oil boilers run at around 85% efficiency depending on age and in a lot of cases can be considerably less than this.

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