Nord Group / Combinations / Heat pump and solar
A heat pump runs on electricity. You can make your own.
This is the one job neither of our companies owns on its own. AuraNord fits the heat pump, ZenithNord fits the solar, and until now you would have had to work that out yourself. You don't. One survey, one team, one company behind both.
Heat pump
Solar & battery
Both are trading names of Qualis Energy Limited, so this is one contract with one company whichever way you buy it. That is not a technicality: it means one point of accountability if anything needs sorting later.
Why they belong together
The logic, in four steps
Solar panels make electricity you did not buy
Generation is highest in the middle of the day, in the middle of the year. On its own, a lot of that goes back to the grid for less than you would have paid to use it.
A heat pump turns electricity into heat, efficiently
It moves heat rather than making it, so it delivers more heat energy than the electrical energy it draws. That is what makes electric heating viable at all.
So the heat pump has somewhere useful to put the solar
Hot water in particular is a good match: it can be made when the sun is out and stored until you need it. That is self-consumption rather than export, and self-consumption is worth more.
A battery moves the rest to when you need it
Storage shifts daytime generation into the evening, and can also charge from the grid on a cheap overnight tariff. Sizing that properly is the difference between a battery that pays and one that sits there.
Solar will not run your heat pump in January
This is where a lot of sales pitches go quiet, so we will not. Your heat pump works hardest in the depths of winter. That is precisely when solar generates least. The two curves do not line up, and anyone implying otherwise is selling you something.
What the combination genuinely does is lower your annual electricity bill and raise the share of what you generate that you actually use, rather than exporting it cheaply. Hot water through spring, summer and autumn is the strongest part of it. Winter space heating is mostly still bought from the grid, ideally on a tariff that suits a heat pump.
That is still a good reason to do both. It is not the reason you will have been given elsewhere, and we would rather you heard it from us before the survey than worked it out afterwards.
One visit
What a combined survey covers
Two engineers, one appointment. You are not booking the same morning off twice, and neither of them is designing around a guess about the other's work.
AuraNord
The heat pump side
- Room-by-room heat loss calculation for the actual property, not a rule of thumb
- Whether the existing radiators and pipework carry it, and what changes if not
- Hot water cylinder position and size
- Outdoor unit siting, noise and access
- MCS certified, which is what makes the Boiler Upgrade Scheme grant available
ZenithNord
The solar and battery side
- System size calculated in design software against the real roof: pitch, orientation and shading
- Twelve months of your consumption, with the heat pump's demand added in
- Battery sizing against that combined profile, not the house as it is today
- Inverter and consumer unit capacity, and the DNO application
- MCS certified for solar PV
The part that only works if you do both at once. Sizing solar against your current electricity use is the commonest mistake when a heat pump is coming. Add one later and the array is too small; size it for the heat pump from the start and it is right the first time. That is the practical argument for one survey rather than two.
What you get
One job, not two
One survey, one visit
Both specialists attend together. Neither designs around an assumption about the other.
Nobody to pass the buck to
Two trades on one job usually means two firms and an argument about whose fault it is. Here it is one company either way, so there is nobody for us to point at.
MCS on both measures
Held centrally by the company, covering heat pump and solar alike.
Where we do this
Across six counties
We install heat pumps and solar together for homes across Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire. Our engineers are based in Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire, so most of the patch is inside an hour's drive, including Mansfield, Newark, Nottingham, Chesterfield, Lincoln, Worksop, Doncaster, Sheffield, Derby and Leicester.
Two things at once
The other combinations
Not sure this is what you need?
Answer six questions instead
Six questions about your house, and we will advise you what to do first, second and third. It takes about a minute, and it includes the jobs we do not sell.
Or call 0333 090 7546 · Mon–Thu 9:00–17:00, Fri 9:00–13:00