In practice, heat pumps often consistently operate at less than half their capacity. This results in a significantly lower SCOP. Installers should take this into account more carefully.
Such oversizing often occurs in larger homes. In theory, heat pumps are often properly sized for the size of the home, but not for its actual usage. In practice, however, often only a small portion of the home is heated. This applies to a rather shocking 55 percent of heat pumps. For homes with hybrid heating, this causes the SCOP to drop from an average of 3.3 to 2.7, and for all-electric homes from 3.8 to 3.0. That is a significant difference.
In contrast, only 28 percent of heat pumps use a significant portion of their rated capacity, and continue to do so even at lower temperatures. This is evident from the Installation Monitor 3.0, which combines smart meter data from more than 6,000 homes with housing and installation data.
Heat distribution systems and night-time temperature reduction
Other notable findings from the study include, for example, that the influence of the type of distribution system is limited for hybrid systems, whereas that influence is much greater for all-electric systems. The importance of the distribution system increases as the heat pump is required to supply a larger portion of the heat demand.
Furthermore, resident behavior appears to be a key factor in heat pump performance, particularly the nighttime temperature reduction. This nighttime temperature reduction leads to lower average efficiency because the heat pump must operate more frequently under unfavorable conditions with higher supply temperatures.
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