Temporospatial techno-economic analysis of heat pumps for decarbonising heating in Great Britain

Abstract

Abstract Electrification of heat using heat pumps with renewable power presents an attractive and technically feasible pathway for decarbonising heat. However, until now, the uptake of heat pumps is much slower than fossil-fuel-based heating, particularly in the UK. To accelerate the use of heat pumps for national-scale heat decarbonisation, this study proposes new approaches to synthesis high-quality temporospatial energy datasets (e.g. hourly depth-dependent region-based ground source temperature), a new framework that enables a national-scale cost analysis using the synthesised datasets rather than individual location-based analysis, and forward-looking analysis and discussions on potential subsidy structures and technology’s R&D directions for facilitating the transition to low-carbon heat using heat pumps. The results suggest that currently, Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) subsidised ground source heat pumps have the lowest levelised cost of heat (10-40% lower than gas boilers), benefiting from the high heating efficiency and the ‘feed-in-tariff’ style RHI subsidy. However, considering the change of future subsidies, required advances are analysed to improve the cashflow of owning heat pumps, improve the heating efficiency, integration with low-cost power sources, and reduction of heat demands through homes’ energy efficiency improvements. These insights will help engineers and policy-makers to decarbonise domestic heat using heat pumps.