The Renewable Heat Incentive is really beginning to hit home after recent figures showed that close to 22,000 UK households have now had green heating measures fitted via the scheme.

 

A total of 21,932 accredited RHI installations have been concluded according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) including renewable heat technologies such as heat pumps, biomass boilers and solar thermal systems.

Air source heat pumps have proved to be the most popular choice of renewable source, accounting for 36% of domestic installations conducted through domestic and non-domestic schemes, closely followed by biomass systems which attracted 28% of the overall total. Solar thermal technologies and ground source heat pumps also enjoyed a generous share of installations, 21% and 15% respectively.

Head of Policy at the Renewable Energy Association, Paul Thompson, was delighted with the domestic RHI numbers saying:

“It shows that there is huge demand for affordable and low-carbon heating in UK households.

“It is encouraging to see that not only has the 20,000-accreditations milestone been reached but the rate of uptake is rapidly increasing. This is hopefully a trend that will continue.”

7,675 businesses have also endorsed RHI under the non-domestic scheme since its launch in November 2012, equating to the delivery of over 1.9GW of renewable heat installed.

Small biomass boilers of less than 200kW capacity have been the favoured form of renewable energy measure for businesses, fitted in 87% of all installations. Add the figures for medium and large biomass boilers to that total and the overall score sits at 94% of installations.

2% of installations were of solar thermal and heat pumps with a tiny integration of other remaining renewable heat technologies. Though five preliminary applications have been made for Combined Heat and Power (CHP), no full applications for CHP have yet been formalised, nor have they been for deep geothermal.

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