Air-to-Air Heat Pump Grant for All-electric & storage-heater homes

Storage-heater and all-electric homes: the case air-to-air was made for

If your home runs on electric night-storage heaters, panel or convector heaters, or an Economy 7 setup, you have spent years watching low-carbon grants go to homes with gas boilers and wet radiators while yours was quietly excluded. The April 2026 reform changed that. Air-to-air joined the Boiler Upgrade Scheme at £2,500, and — because it needs no radiators, no pipework and no hot-water cylinder — it is the natural, proportionate low-carbon upgrade for exactly the homes that were locked out. Nesta and the government estimate the change opens a realistic grant route to roughly 1.7 million England and Wales homes without wet central heating.

Why the running-cost saving is real here (and not everywhere). A storage or panel heater is a resistive element: one unit of electricity in, one unit of heat out, a COP of 1.0. A good air-to-air heat pump runs at a SCOP of 4.0 to 4.6 — four-plus units of heat per unit of electricity. Replace 7,500 kWh of storage-heater demand and you go from drawing ~7,500 kWh of electricity to roughly 1,700-1,900 kWh for the same warmth. There is a genuine caveat we won't hide: storage heaters run on a cheap Economy 7 night unit (~15p), while a heat pump runs largely on the day rate (26.11p at the July 2026 cap), so the honest bill saving lands around £500-£900 a year rather than the '70% off' some adverts imply — best if you move onto a heat-pump time-of-use tariff. But against a home already on a single-rate tariff, or one that struggles with heat 'running out' by evening, the improvement in both cost and comfort is substantial.

The maths that makes it compelling. A whole-home multi-split for a flat or small house runs roughly £3,000-£4,500 installed with 0% VAT. Deduct the £2,500 grant and your net cost can fall to a few hundred to a couple of thousand pounds — a payback often inside two years against storage heaters, plus free summer cooling you never had. See typical costs and check your position on our eligibility checker.

What you still need to sort: hot water. Air-to-air heats your rooms, not your water. Most all-electric homes already heat water with an immersion cylinder, so you simply keep it — but budget for it and know that immersion hot water (COP 1) is the least efficient part of the setup. A standalone hot-water heat pump is an option later.

The honest condition. The grant needs the air-to-air system to be your home's heating, replacing the storage/electric heaters — not a single unit bolted on for cooling. And you must use an MCS-certified air-to-air installer, which in 2026 are still scarce. If that all lines up, this is the strongest air-to-air case there is.