Homely, Heat Pumps and Solar: Optimising the Electrified Home
Here at Homely we believe in empowering people to power their homes and lives with sustainable energy. We do this by helping people heat their homes as efficiently as possible. That’s why we love solar panels – there is no better way to generate the energy needed to power your house and your life.
After a busy winter of modelling, development, and testing, we’re really excited by the results we’ve been able to achieve with our soon-to-be released Home Energy Management system (HEMs).
Are you an Installer?
Why not get signed as a Homely installer and be one step ahead of the crowd when our HEMs product is launched.
Are you an Installer?
Why not get signed as a Homely installer and be one step ahead of the crowd when our HEMs product is launched.
What are the benefits?
Increase your use of sustainable, renewable energy – cleaner, greener, and kinder to your wallet.
Boost your investment
Get the most from your solar PV investment by using more of the energy you generate for heating and hot water. Solar is a smart investment; Homely makes it even smarter.
Reduce your bills
It is generally much more cost-effective to use what you generate than sell it back to your energy supplier*.
More independence
Rely less on the grid for heating and hot water, and help to protect the grid by reducing demand at peak periods.
How does it work?
Spring and autumn is when you may get the most benefit. That’s because solar panels generate a surprising amount of energy in these seasons, but the outside temperatures are lower, meaning home heating is more likely to be required.
Tell Homely about your solar panels, and it will check the weather forecast to figure out how much energy you can expect to produce
Homely then uses this information to make a bespoke heating plan for the day ahead. In this way you will benefit from:
- Smart hot water boosts that time water heating for the sunniest time of day [coming soon]
- Heating schedules that take advantage of excess solar generation, running the radiators at higher temperatures than normal where appropriate
Connect a compatible battery and a smart energy tariff and it gets even better. Homely understands:
- The energy you need for heating
- The energy you generate from your solar panels
- Your individual energy usage (non-heating)
- Your tariff rates, and so the relative cost of energy now and later
Homely puts all this information together to come up with an optimised plan for both battery and heat pump, coordinating the two devices to work in harmony. This plan isn’t set in stone – if anything changes, the plan changes too. Homely is always working to deliver the perfect optimisation.
Let's consider two examples
On a cold, bright spring day, Homely will most likely look to run the radiators a little bit hotter than usual around lunchtime and in the early afternoon. Your house will warm up, soaking up the energy you are generating and turning it into free heat. In the evening and overnight you won’t have to run the heat pump nearly as much and your house will still be warm come morning. Warm house, less grid energy, lower bills, win-win.
A slightly more complicated example: you have an off-peak electricity tariff overnight in which to charge your battery, and tomorrow is an autumn day with a rainy morning but brighter afternoon expected. In this case, Homely will analyse your energy usage to estimate how much electricity you are going to need before the sun comes out, including how much energy you are going to need for heating, and charge your battery appropriately. Maybe that means topping it up to 40%, 50%, or 100% – each day will be different.
12 month overview
Figure 1: PV exports are dramatically reduced in spring and autumn when operating a heat pump in sync with the weather. These results come from modelling a typical modern semi-detached property with a 4 kWp solar array.
Compatibility & FAQs
All solar PV systems are compatible.
Today we are compatible with:
- Alpha ESS
- Huawei Luna
New inverters are coming soon, watch this space and we’ll announce new integrations as we complete them.
The battery must be connected to Homely and the heat pump by an engineer via a CAT5 (ethernet) cable which gives uninterrupted communications between the devices.
The easiest time to configure this is during installation of either the battery, the heat pump, or the Homely.
Yes. Homely will create an optimised heating plan that takes your solar panels into account, and your battery will balance things out, storing energy when heating is not required.
However, we won’t be able to automatically charge your battery according to your time of use tariff, or tailor the amount of grid charging to reflect the forecasted weather conditions.
*Exact savings will vary from person-to-person, but in our model house changing the heating plan to reflect PV generation reduces electricity exports by a huge 45%, leading to overall energy savings of £140 per year. This model house has 4 kWp solar, is well-insulated, is on a single-rate import tariff and the basic SEG export tariff.