17 March 2026
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Advertorial
Michael Barbour at Midsummer Energy, discusses why domestic heating products need to be treated as flexible, intelligent energy assets, as they are key to making net zero affordable — cutting costs, balancing the grid, and boosting energy security.
The electrification of heat risks being seen as a contradiction by consumers in the UK. The cleanest energy source should be the cheapest too, and yet gas prices are three to five times lower than electricity, despite around 45% of the UK’s electricity coming from renewable sources. Many homeowners therefore believe electric heating technologies will prove more expensive than traditional gas. Nonetheless, electrifying heat at scale is crucial for the UK’s net zero pathway and has the potential to benefit consumers significantly.
To realise this opportunity, domestic heating products must no longer be viewed as passive demand. Instead, they need to be treated as flexible, intelligent energy assets, in line with the model other distributed energy resources (DER) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) are already embracing. In such a model, the home is no longer a problem for a constrained grid. Its energy assets - including heating technologies - become part of a distributed balancing mechanism that can smooth demand peaks, reduce reliance on imported fossil fuels, and lower wholesale electricity prices. This is the new energy paradigm that is emerging, and it is essential that heating technologies are included.
This paradigm is driven by flexibility: the grid’s ability to respond to periods of high or low demand while remaining within critical frequency limits. As electricity demand grows and renewable penetration increases, flexibility is becoming more valuable as an alternative to slow and expensive grid reinforcement. Increasingly, National Grid ESO and distribution network operators contract flexibility from non-traditional sources such as BESS and virtual power plants (VPP), made up of aggregated DERs located in homes. Using smart home energy management systems (HEMS), providers can aggregate DERs and automate their response to price signals and grid events. This allows consumers to shift electricity use to cheaper periods, earn revenue through schemes such as the Demand Flexibility Service, and automate heating operation to minimise costs while maintaining comfort. However, while optimisation platforms for batteries and EVs are expanding rapidly, heating technologies have been left behind.
This represents a major gap. Heat pumps, thermal storage, and related electric heating technologies represent at least 10GW of flexibility potential by 2030 according to BEEAMA, even before accounting for the future ability of heat pumps to use building thermal mass as a flexibility asset. This is more than three times the peak output of Hinkley Point C. Electrically powered heating therefore represents one of the UK’s largest untapped flexibility resources.
For consumers, the opportunity is substantial. Around 80% of household energy consumption in the UK goes towards space heating and hot water. If this demand can be shifted away from peak periods and managed automatically, costs fall. NESTA’s HeatFlex project demonstrates that smart heat pump operation can preheat homes or hot water during low-price, low-carbon periods without compromising comfort. The study showed a 32% reduction in whole-house electricity consumption and a 74% reduction in heat pump electricity use during targeted flexibility windows, with high participation and low optout rates. Aggregated across households, this delivers meaningful peak demand reduction and financial benefits without requiring active consumer engagement.
Flexibility is not limited to homes suitable for heat pumps. Heat batteries, domestic hot water heat pumps and smart hot water cylinders all provide valuable flexibility, particularly for flats and hard-to-treat homes. If just 20% of hot water cylinders installed today were smart-enabled, the UK grid would gain around 5GW of flexible demand. Compact heat batteries can deliver the majority of a home’s heating requirement and charge during cheap periods.
Scaling electric heat without flexibility risks increasing system stress. Scaling it as a flexible resource does the opposite and crucially bolsters energy security. Reframing homes as grid balancing DERs turns them into national and personal energy assets, lowering costs, enabling greater renewable integration, and enhancing energy security. Flexibility is the bridge that makes heat electrification both affordable and sustainable, and heating technologies are a crucial part of the equation. This is the model that consumers need to buy into, because without the decentralised flexibility afforded by energy assets including heating technologies located in their homes around the country, the energy transition will struggle to reach its destination.
Sources
- Martin Kavan (NESTA). ‘How different households use energy and how much it costs them’ https://tinyurl.com/2pu965pw
- Frankie Mayo & Uni Lee (EMBER). ‘The UK can enhance energy security through clean electrification’ https://tinyurl.com/mpumjdr
- UK Government, 2022. ‘Electric vehicle smart charging action plan’ https://tinyurl.com/p8vsecwu
- Yselkla Farmer (BEEAMA), 2025. ‘What should I do? Accelerating heat electrification by providing customer choice’ https://tinyurl.com/3f8ky8bz
