Why should we be installing electric heating into our homes?

Why should we be installing direct electric heating products into our homes?

New laws are currently being looked at to help move existing homes away from high carbon fossil fuel heating towards greener, electrical alternatives. The one you might have heard the most about is using heat pumps to replace natural gas boilers, but let's not rule direct acting solutions out just yet. They offer a flexible solution to make homes greener and, in the future, they will be a much-needed retrofit solution, alongside many different types of heat pump and regional pockets of hydrogen.

When is a direct acting solution the best choice?

When looking at the range of existing homes in the UK, there will be no one size fits all answer to making them greener. In some dwellings, direct acting solutions will be the best retrofit option, based on factors including:

• Feasibility: Technologies such as heat pumps, although a key player in our greener future, will not always be a suitable retrofit for every home. This may be due to lack of space, budget constraints or it just might not fit with the home owner's requirements.
• Cost: Over time, gas will become more expensive than electric and a wave of bill payers will be looking to switch their heating to some form of electric system. When this happens, a range of cost options needs to be available to cater for all budgets.
• Choice: Direct electric solutions are currently installed in hundreds of thousands of households across the UK with many happy users. When looking at a retrofit, it may just be that the homeowner knows what they want from their system and the way it looks, works and ‘feels’.

Direct acting product options

The future of heat in our homes will include a range of technologies. For direct acting products, this could either be as a full direct acting specification or part of a hybrid system. Hybrid systems are where two different technology types are mixed to offer joint benefits. A popular example is using a hot water heat pump (for hot water) such as the Edel unit and direct acting panel heaters such as the Q-Rad electric radiator as a flexible, low-cost heating system. There are a range of direct acting specification options available for installers to use, including:

• Edel hot water heat pump
• Quantum high heat retention storage heater
• Q-Rad electric radiator
• PLXE electric panel heater

Our electrified future contains many opportunities for new technologies. To find out more about what’s changing and how you can specify and install the right products to meet these new requirements, speak to one of our experts.