If you have an air source heat pump, who supplies your electricity?

[RedGlassHeart]

We’re a couple in a two bed semi, moved in to this house that already had the heat pump installed but it’s a new build so no one lived here before us.
Octopus charge us £183 a month on Cosy 6M Fixed tariff which charges us 3 different rates depending on time of day. We both work so aren’t sat at home all day using the electricity.

We thought it was supposed to be cheaper than dual fuel standard gas/elec that we had in our last place which cost us £80 per month in total!

So I wondered who other heat pump owners are with, and if you’re on a special heat pump tariff like we are?

I’m on agile, so the rate changes every 30 mins, but I’ve got batteries so store electric there. It shouldn’t be costing you hardly anything at the moment ? Mine is peanuts during the summer, about £100 a month over autumn, sell a kidney Jan / Feb
/ March

We are on Octopus GO, but that's because we have an EV. I configured the HP heat the water during the cheap rate charging slot, which usually lasts us. Our DD is similar to yours, but we are paying for car mileage as well and building a "buffer" for winter.
Separately, it's worth making sure the HP is setup and commissioned correctly, otherwise your bills will be higher than expected. If it's a new build, insist the company comes and checks it if you're not sure, and then explains it to you. As a PP says, it shouldn't be costing you anything right now other than a few pence to heat water in your "cheap slot".

We’re on octopus cosy with our heat pump and have a dd of £150/month for four bed house. We also have an app from Homely on our heat pump which talks to octopus (somehow) so that the heat pump is in use during the cheaper periods and not during the most expensive times. July’s electricity bill has come to about £100

Ok thanks everyone. We’ve had the central heating completely switched off the last 3 months, but hadn’t thought to check when the water is being heated. Will look into that today and if we can change it, see if that makes a difference. If not we’ll get the installer to come and check things.
We don’t use the EV charger so that’s not costing us anything.
Oh just thought of another question! In times where you have the heating on, is it ok to have radiators in rooms you don’t use as much switched off? Like in the downstairs loo, and the radiator by the back door? DH thinks this might be inefficient, I thought better to only have on the ones we actually need on. I might be wrong though!

Fine to have those switched off so long as you're keeping them switched off all the time. It would be inefficient to keep turning them on and off as it takes a long time to get up to temperature, but so long as you are keeping the house warm overall you can leave off any radiators you don't need.

We're with octopus and pay £200 a month but that includes car charging and we're a 4 bed house. The hot water is heated on our cheap rate hours.

Really useful info, thank you!

It's fine to turn those radiators off, as long as you generally plan to keep them off.
Heat pumps are not like gas, they are most efficient on a "low and slow" principle, if you weren't aware already. Our main power draw is when it first starts (we time that with the end of our cheap overnight hours!!) and then the power consumption drops right down as it's mostly just circulating the lukewarm water all day. Constantly adjusting the radiators during the day will mean the HP will need to heat the water more rather than just keeping a steady temperature.

Good info here too, thank you!
Yeah I completely switched off two of the radiators that we really don’t need on at all so it’s not that I’m putting them on and off, they’re just off. I think my husband thought that if they were off then the system would have to work harder to heat the rest of the house using fewer radiators. But I disagreed and I wasn’t sure which of us was right.

To be fair, if the thermostat is in one of those rooms, OR you leave doors between those rooms and the rest of the house open he is correct.
In the first case, your heating system will continuously heat up because it'll never hit the desired temperature and the rest of your house will be like a sauna 😂 - i may have used this to my advantage with our old gas boiler to make our house warmer in the past 😉
The second is similar - there's less "area" to heat the house with those radiators closed so the water temperature needs to be higher. If you've closed the doors to keep those rooms colder that's fine, but leave them open and your heat pump has to work harder 🙂 - hope that helps. Tbh we just leave all the valves open and let it do its thing, but if you have rooms you literally don't use and keep closed off like a utility room I can see the sense in turning off their thermostatic valves.

Understood! One of them is in the tiny downstairs loo with the door always closed, the other is just outside that room in the small space next to the back door. The door between that space and the living room is always open so maybe I should switch that one back on.