Hybrid heat pumps have arisen as an alternative technology to pure-electrical heat pumps to electrify domestic heating demand. With lower capital cost and the ability to shift between an electrical heat pump and a gas boiler, it has the potential to overcome obstacles to heat pump rollout and its performance gap. Energy flexibility provision is a crucial property of a hybrid heat pump. Shuwen is looking to base the PhD study on quantifying and predicting the flexibility provision of hybrid heat pumps installed in UK households and exploring ways to improve the performance on a system level.

At the current stage, Shuwen is exploring the use of demand-side monitoring and metering data to predict and evaluate the potential of flexibility provision by hybrid heat pumps in UK households. Prospective research in the future includes validation of the predicted flexibility and evaluation of the flexibility provision from a system perspective.