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Gareth Coffey has a life hack for heat pump owners.
Most people get home from work, then crack their heat pump to 30 degrees in an effort quickly warm their home (or in summer, turn up its air con mode to the max).
It’s far cheaper to gradually warm your home over a couple of hours before you walk in the door, if you can control your heat pump remotely.
That was one of the findings from a trial of 48 homes run by Genesis, where Coffey is head of energy services.
Each was given a Sensibo unit, which retails from around $180 and is designed to give any heat pump with remote control wi-fi connectivity - meaning you can turn it off or on, or control its temperature, via a smartphone app.
While customers can buy a Sensibo, Genesis got access to its platform, allowing the power company to issue commands to a mix and match of different makes and models of heat pumps, controlling many units at once - or at least offering prompts.
Genesis ran two scenarios where the Sensibo either turned down the customers’ pumps by 1 degree for an hour during a morning or evening peak, or switched off the pump for 20 minutes at peak times.
“In a post-trial survey, the majority of customers said they either hadn’t noticed the temperature decrease, or weren’t bothered by it,” Coffey said.
In the 20-minute turn-off scenario, Genesis found customers could save around 28 cents each time their usage was reduced. The 1 degree reduction for an hour also yielded savings, though an average was harder to quantify, given some started from a higher temperature than others.
That works out to just $2 per week - or maybe just under $4 if you pull back a couple of times a day, with scope to double that or more if you’ve got two or more pumps. It’s not a fortune, but it‘s better than a poke in the eye at a time when the government’s winter energy payments run to $20.46 per week for people living alone, to $31.82 per week for those with dependents.
And Coffey said it should also be seen in the context that, in many homes, a heat pump could cost up to $70 a month - which could make it the biggest contributor to a household’s power bill.
It’s also possible that Genesis will offer further incentives for those who sign up for heat pump management.
It’s also a step toward a broader smart-home strategy for co-ordinating power consumption, which will likely also take in hot water cylinders and EV charging - all wrangled through the power retailer’s Energy IQ app (Genesis has already leaned in this direction on the electric vehicle, where it worked with Christchurch home charger maker Evnex to integrate remote and automated charging into its app).
That’s a way down the track, however. The initial heat pump trial ran from September through to November last year - “Not in the heart of winter but still cold enough for use to see plenty of usage”. Another trial is planned over summer to see how things go with cooling, then a third involving automated pre-heating next winter.
Whether a Sensibo is free or subsidised in any smart home plan, if eventuates, will be decided closer to launch.