Installing an electric heat pump

Our role is to offer advice and make sure your electricity supply is ready for a heat pump. Your installer will either be able to connect your heat pump straight away and notify us, or we will need to complete some work first.

If you're having a single household heat pump installed (rated at 100amps or below), your installer can either fill in and send the application form below or use our Smart Connect assessment portal.

If your device does not meet the Smart Connect criteria your installer should use the form and send it to MBX-heatpumps@ukpowernetworks.co.uk

Before submitting your form, please ask your installer to make sure the proposed new heat pump is registered on the ENA's heat pump database. Guidance for installers is available here.

Some customers - mainly local authorities and businesses - may want to connect larger heat pumps to provide heating for multiple properties, flats or buildings. If this sounds like you, please book a surgery with one of our experts to discuss your project. We'll talk you through the process before you have submitted the relevant form.

Email AskTheExpert@ukpowernetworks.co.uk and we'll respond within five working days.

Burning fossil fuels like oil or gas for heating is responsible for around a third of the UK's emissions. We are determined to make it easy and simple for our customers to switch to low carbon heating.

You may have heard the term 'Net Zero', which means the UK is aiming to reduce its emission to almost zero and offset the rest. Our role is to facilitate Net Zero by helping connect low carbon technology to our network. View our heat page for more information.

A heat pump is a device that uses electricity to transfer heat from one environment to the other, similar to how a refrigerator works. There are many different commercially available options. These include those which use air drawn from outside your property ('air source') and those which use heat drawn from underground ('ground source'). Some heat pumps are similar to the photo at the top of this page, which blow hot air into your home like air conditioning units. Other heat pumps can be used to heat water instead, and pump that warm water through traditional household radiators. For a complete guide to heat pumps, visit the Renewable Energy Hub. We’ve also included some helpful links below if you want to find out more.

While natural gas is the main source of household heating in the UK, we forecast that in the future more and more homes will switch from mainly gas to mainly electric heating. This could help achieve Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050, because electricity can be supplied by renewables like solar or wind.  There has been significant progress on this front in the last decade - a record-breaking 37% of the UK's energy came from renewable sources in the 12 months to June 2020.