Best Of

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2025/heat-mortality-monitoring-report-england-2025

Note that they are talking about episodes where the mean temperature hit… 22 and a bit degrees

And they were noticing deaths in the statistics.

The conclusion that care homes should have air-con is astonishingly obvious

Everywhere should. The government should offer some kind of incentive for domestic houses to install solar panels + aircon as a package.

solar panels + heat pumps please

AC is an air-to-air heat pump.

Previously they only promoted air-to-water heat pumps as an alternative to gas boilers but they're not always suitable for retrofitting as a like-for-like replacement which has damaged their image. The good thing about AC is that it complements whatever else you've got instead of attempting to replace it.

A heat pump is just an AC unit with (a) a variable speed compressor, that can (b) run in reverse and therefore heat as well as cool.

In our flat in London, we put in air conditioning about three years ago. In retrospect, we should have gone with a heat pump. But I guess we were probably about a year too early.

I know I've said it before but our heat pump is keep the house really cool. It's currently 33.7 outside and 23.4 inside; it peaked at 35.7* outside and 24.2 inside.

(*That's an absolute record high for us, not for June but for any month. We've been recording for 16 years.)

They work for well insulated homes that have been designed for them.

Stick them in an average British semi and they'd be shit. The output isn't good enough. They don't heat hot enough fast enough in Winter, and provide enough hot water when you need it, and take ages to cool a house down in the Summer.

The rest is propaganda. They are expensive and a bit shit.

This is why no-one buys one.

That's not true at all. Just more deranged anti-wokism. I used to work in this area, designing heat pump systems for domestic homes. Any house built from 2010 onwards, which is a lot of houses, is suitable. Houses built earlier may be suitable, they may not be. It depends.

At today's energy price cap prices:

Gas 5.74p/kwh
Electric 24.67p/kwh

Gas combi boiler typically better than 92% efficiency.
Thus 1kw of gas boiler output approx 5.74 / 0. 92 = 6.24p
24.67 / 6.24 = 3.95 so for a Heat Pump to be cheaper than gas would require a system COP value greater than 3.95.

Google suggests that's just about achievable with a good system, but a lot of installs won't be getting past 3.0 in typical usage.

So the short answer is - most heat pumps are still more expensive to run than mains gas.

There are a couple side notes to this.

One is that lots of people install heat pumps and report substantial savings. Usually if you ask the pertinent questions, it becomes apparent that the heat pump install included a load of insulation - what is not realised is that the savings are usually all from the insulation.

The other is that if you are willing to go on a time of day/price shifting electric tariff, it's possible for your electricity to cost vastly less than the cap. The snag is that it either means loads of extra cap-ex on a battery, or you get well and truly shafted on the "on peak" electricity price (even if your heat pump only runs on off peak electric, other appliances on your house may be less obliging).

(in our climate, there is a strong anti-synergy with solar panels and heat pumps as solar output is usually dismal in the 3 months of the year you want the heating on) .

Your gas price cap number is out of date: it's currently 7.3p.

Plus, there are two provisos you need to add to this:

(1) With the heat pump you also get cooling in summer!
(2) If you have solar panels -and in time everyone will have solar panels- then your electricity price will be *much* closer to that gas per KWh number.

My numbers are correct for today. Having looked a little further, you are however correct that the gas price cap goes up in July; although so does the electric price cap.

Solar panels and a heat pump are virtually useless for heating the housing in the UK although they will work well to drive aircon.

My inlaws have a fairly decent rooftop solar array, it generates about 3kw in full sun. Seasonal monthly production for 2024 (2025 is misleading as they had half the array down with a fault for 6 weeks).

Jan 61kwh
Feb 98kwh
Mar 252kwh
Apr 416kwh
May 506kwh
Jun 624kwh
Jul 524kwh
Aug 466kwh
Sep 274kwh
Oct 122kwh
Nov 51kwh
Dec 42kwh

Their house uses about 270kwh/month with little seasonal variation (they have gas central heating), so October to Feb they are already importing electricity to make up the shortfall.

Obviously they could fit more panels, but this is not free, they probably won't be able to export all the summer production (I'm not sure what DNO limit they have, probably 3.5kw), and at about double their present number of panels, they willl have used every inch of roof space, including some quite suboptimal bits.

They'd have to completely cover the back garden in panels run a heatpump off solar in the winter, and would also need a substantial battery as the day to day variation is considerable (anything from 0.4kwh to 2.5kwh generated per day with their current system through January - by comparison it made 25kwh today).

And that's why you have a grid connection: because there are going to be times you will want electricity from the grid. And you know what... a lot of the time, espcially in winter, that's going to be natural gas generating that electricity.

Here's the thing: your inlaws have their total electricity usafge covered for seven months of the year, with a further two months where it's a significant chunk is covered, and for three months, solar is m'eh.

And that's OK. Because that means that the UK burning essentially no natural gas or coal for 60% of the year for this house, and is seeing a decent saving on another 15%. For a quarter of the year, they still need to rely on natural gas. But that's fine because (being sensible) the UK has (or rather should) have been stockpiling and storing it.

General Donahue’s removal is said to be part of an ongoing push by Hegseth to put his imprint on the military’s leadership, while squeezing out officers with track records of battlefield valor and command experience in favor of less accomplished political loyalists, officers that fully support both himself and President Trump.

https://x.com/sentdefender/status/2069773181334773907



Only two more years and three or so months to go kids.

The sad thing is the next lot will have to get rid of his politically appointed idiots, which the republicans will then say is itself followed by political appointments. And so the circle will go on, and America now has a politicised military.

Trump has destroyed another institution.