James Clark | Elite Services Group

What does a qualification actually tell you about the person installing your heat pump? Paul Spence has been in heating since 1980, and his answer is blunt: not much.Paul started as an apprentice at Leeds Building College, spent five years as a marine engineer in the Royal Navy working on screw compressor chillers and ships' cooling systems, then went self-employed through the combi boiler boom of the 1990s. He now runs the Heat Pumps UK Facebook group, with 33,000 members, and has spent years rectifying heat pump systems that were signed off as compliant and still didn't work.In this episode we talk about what an apprenticeship used to involve versus a three-day course, why City & Guilds gave way to NVQs, how gas certification quietly let people into wet heating work they weren't trained for, and why the same problem has reappeared in heat pumps. Paul explains why he thinks MCS, MCS 3005D and BS 12831 have made installers' lives harder without improving standards, what the Boiler Upgrade Scheme's future means for certification bodies, and what a genuine apprenticeship route for the next generation of heat pump installers would look like.If you've had a heat pump installed and it isn't performing, or you're an engineer fed up with the paperwork, this one is for you.#heatpump #heatpumps #heatpumpinstaller➤ Need help choosing a trusted heat pump installer?🔗 https://trustedheatpumpinstallers.co.uk/🎙️ Energy Unwrapped Podcast:🔗 https://energy-stats.uk/energy-unwrapped-podcast/⚡ Switch to Octopus Energy🔗 https://mickwall.octopus.energy/⚡Switch to E.ON Next🔗 https://tidd.ly/4xD3E6R⚡Switch to EDF Energy🔗 https://tidd.ly/4a2Xbbr⚡ Axle Energy Referral (free to join and £25 sign up bonus)🔗 https://vpp.axle.energy/landing/grid?ref=R-ZWPYRZOD

Can you really get paid £1/kWh to help the grid with a home battery? I sat down with Pete Last from Axle Energy to explain how virtual power plants work, and how batteries, EV charging, heat pumps and hot water cylinders can earn money with grid flexibility.In this Energy Unwrapped deep dive we cover what demand flexibility actually means, why wind farms get turned off when it's too windy, how Axle Energy works alongside suppliers like Octopus Energy, what time of use tariffs like Octopus Agile get right, and why a battery without solar can now pay back in 4-5 years. We also dig into smart EV charging, vehicle to grid, heat pump flexibility without losing comfort, and why your hot water cylinder is a 10kWh battery.Whether you have solar battery storage already or you're looking at energy storage, electric cars and how to cut UK energy bills, this is real data on what works, what it pays, and where the numbers don't match the marketing.In this episode:- What is grid flexibility and why wind and solar need it- How Axle Energy's virtual power plant aggregates home batteries, EVs and heat pumps- £1/kWh home battery exports vs 27p price cap explained- Smart EV charging at home and £10/month rewards- Octopus Agile, Octopus Energy and time of use tariffs- Heat pump flexibility, hot water cylinders and whole home energy management#AxleEnergy #SolarBatteryStorage #OctopusAgile #EVCharging #HeatPump⚡ Axle Energy Referral (free to join and £25 sign up bonus)👉 https://vpp.axle.energy/landing/grid?ref=R-ZWPYRZOD📊 Real-world UK energy data, analysis and tools:👉 https://energy-stats.uk🔥 Need help choosing a trusted heat pump installer?👉 https://trustedheatpumpinstallers.co.uk/🎙️ Energy Unwrapped Podcast:👉 https://energy-stats.uk/energy-unwrapped-podcast/⚡ Switch to Octopus Energy👉 https://mickwall.octopus.energy/⚡Switch to E.ON Next👉 https://tidd.ly/4xD3E6R⚡Switch to EDF Energy👉 https://tidd.ly/4a2Xbbr

Heat pumps get talked about like they're brand new technology — they're not. On this episode of the Energy Unwrapped Podcast, I sit down with Nathan Gambling, lecturer in plumbing and heating and host of the Beta Talk podcast, to trace how Britain actually got its heating: from single-room fires, through town gas and the conversion to natural gas, to the combi boiler boom — and how heat pumps have quietly been running in the background the whole time, including one that heated a Norwich building from the River Wensum from 1945 until the 2000s.We get into:- Why "heat pumps are not new" — Graeme Haldane's 1927 experiments and John Sumner's 1945 Norwich heat pump- How Britain's town-gas-to-natural-gas conversion became one of the biggest planned engineering operations in peacetime history- Why Canvey Island became the UK's first LNG terminal- Why radiators were never designed to be scorching hot — and why that still trips people up with heat pumps today- Why the UK became the world's biggest gas boiler market, and what that legacy means for the heat pump transition now#HeatPumps #EnergyUnwrapped #UKHeating #RenewableEnergy #HeatingEngineerI'll leave a link to my trusted heat pump installer directory and the Energy Unwrapped podcast below.📊 Real-world UK energy data, analysis and tools:👉 https://energy-stats.uk🔥 Need help choosing a trusted heat pump installer?👉 https://trustedheatpumpinstallers.co.uk/⚡ Switch to Octopus Energy (we both get £50):👉 https://mickwall.octopus.energy/🎙️ Energy Unwrapped Podcast:👉 https://energy-stats.uk/energy-unwrapped-podcast/

Hot water cylinders are one of the UK's biggest untapped energy storage assets — and most homes don't even know it. In this episode of the Energy Unwrapped Podcast, I sit down with Pete Armstrong, CEO and co-founder of Mixergy, to unpack a decade of engineering behind the smart hot water cylinder.We get into how top-down heating and stratification let a single 200L tank store roughly 10 kWh of usable energy, why there's something like 10 times more energy sitting in the UK's hot water tanks than in Dinorwig's pumped hydro plant, and how curtailed wind power in Scotland could be turned into free hot water for half of Scottish homes instead of being switched off.Pete also walks through why Mixergy moved to local, cloud-independent control, what the upcoming Secure Smart Electricity System regulation means for appliances like this, and where hot water storage sits against home batteries and EVs in the flexibility conversation.#Mixergy #HotWaterCylinder #EnergyStorage #UKEnergy #GridFlexibility #EnergyUnwrapped🎙️ Full Energy Unwrapped Podcast:👉 https://energy-stats.uk/energy-unwrapped-podcast/📊 Real-world UK energy data, analysis and tools:👉 https://energy-stats.uk🔥 Need help choosing a trusted heat pump installer?👉 https://www.trustedheatpumpinstallers.co.uk/⚡ Switch to Octopus Energy (we both get £50):👉 https://mickwall.octopus.energy/

In this episode of the Energy Unwrapped podcast, I speak to Glyn Hudson and Trystan Lea from OpenEnergyMonitor.