In the past few weeks, it has been refreshing to see the topic of ENERGY being featured in the news quite regularly. This week, we heard about Government plans for the future of the electricity network in the UK. These plans include:
- Promoting the generation of electricity at home through the use of solar panels
- Encouraging the storage of this electricity to home battery storage and having the ability to sell this power to the National Grid at times of peak demand
- Enabling people to have advantageous tariffs in return for agreeing to have appliances turned off for a few minutes to smooth demand at peak times
The Role of Heat Pumps
This policy direction is very encouraging, particularly when you consider the role that heat pumps will play in this future energy landscape. Due to the principle of heat pump operation - to provide consistent, low-level heat as opposed to short bursts of intense heat - they are well suited to being switched off for short periods of time without having any affect on the comfort levels of the property.
This opens the door for lower electricity tariffs for heat pump owners in the future, which is a very exciting prospect for customers who already own a heat pump, or are considering switching from traditional fossil fuels to heat pump technology.
Zero Carbon Electricity
In a recent blog post we reported that half of the UK's electricity was produced from a renewable source. This is going to be a growing trend, as more investment is put into renewable electricity sources.
And heat pumps are the perfect technology to maximise the benefit of zero carbon electricity. A heat pump represents the most efficient way to heat a property with electricity, and so the use of a heat pump ensures that the renewable electricity generated is used as efficienctly as possible. Further more, as the electricity grid moves towards zero carbon, heat pumps too are moving towards being a genuine zero carbon heating solution.
IVT Heat Pumps
IVT Heat Pumps: Smart Meter Ready
Alto Energy is the UK importer and distributor for IVT heat pumps. As you would expect from IVT - a Bosch group company - all of IVT's heat pumps are already engineered with the future in mind. All heat pumps have an "External Control" function, which allows a smart meter to tell the heat pump to stop operating for a period of time. Once a smart meter has been fitted in your property, a control cable can be installed between the meter and the heat pump, and the settings in the heat pump are configured to enable smart control. The settings for this function can be customised, enabling you to control how long, and under what conditions, the heat pump will be powered down.
What this means is that as the electricity market in the UK develops, owners of IVT heat pumps will be able to take full advantage of the new energy landscape.