Same old indoor temperature for less money, while contributing to the green transition? Yes please! This is the promised premise when digital heat pump control is now launched on a wide scale.

Inflation, with rising prices in everything from food to streaming services, is a hot topic. But in the energy sector, we can see a silver lining. The new digital heat pump control service has been tested and refined over the past year in the hope of providing homeowners with a cheaper and more environmentally friendly option to heat their homes.

But what exactly is digital and smart heat pump control? In theory, it's quite simple. The technology uses the thermal inertia of your home - you could say that your home's floors, walls, ceilings and furnishings act as a heat store, a battery.

By installing a hardware to your existing heat pump, the service can control the pump to work more when the price of electricity is low, and go into "stand-by" mode when it is more expensive. This leads to cheaper heating and hot water in the home, as well as a better balance between production and consumption in the electricity grid.

By December 2026 at the latest, all electricity network companies in Sweden must also have introduced power tariffs. This means that residential customers will not only pay for the energy they consume, but also for the maximum power they use at any one time. This makes it even more important not to run the heat pump and the electric car charger at the same time.

Henrik Lönnqvist lives in a villa in Trelleborg with his family and jumped on a pilot project launched by the energy company almost a year ago.

- We received a mailing in the mailbox in February 2023 and as I am interested in such issues, I decided to test. Not for the financial gain in the first place, but rather to be able to contribute to society at large. But if I can also save money in the process, it is of course a welcome bonus," he says.

No sooner said than done. Henrik Lönnqvist declared his interest and shortly afterwards the service was installed for the family's heat pump. And shortly after that, the installation was complete and the digital control was up and running.

- It was a very smooth process I must say. Once the installation was complete, I could sit back and did not have to keep track of anything, everything happens automatically. But as I am curious and interested in these issues, I still kept an eye on it and could see that the heat pump was running at high speed when electricity prices were lower and that the pump used the stored energy when the price rose," he says.

Have you noticed any difference in the indoor climate since digital control took over?

- Not at all, actually. Then I know that Easyserv (the company Trelleborgs Energi hired to manage the digital heat pump control) took a rather defensive approach in the beginning, precisely so as not to risk affecting the indoor climate.

Having used the service for about a year now, do you see any potential for improvement?

- I think a more aggressive control that is more adapted to each household would be good. During the pilot project, it has been the same for everyone who tested regardless of where you live, what pump you have and what type of house you live in. Quite simply, the service is tailored even more to each user's needs and conditions.

What about the price? For Henrik Lönnqvist and everyone else involved in the pilot project, the first year has been free of charge, but he has been given indications that the installation of the hardware will cost around SEK 1,200 and the monthly subscription cost for the service will be less than a hundred kronor. And he has been able to save a few hundred dollars in heating costs.

- I have not been able to read the cost savings exactly, but between thumb and forefinger we probably cut at least SEK 200-300 a month with this solution. Then I think the potential is even higher with a more customized solution," he says.

Would you recommend digital heat pump control? And if so, why?

- I would, absolutely. This one we have or similar. I think it is a great and important help for the common electricity grid to find balance. Today, many people have an electric car and charging it and heating the house are two major items where we can really influence, then this type of service is a great and simple help.

Instead of adapting your life to electricity prices and, for example, running the washing machine or dishwasher at night, this is a much more flexible solution. Not least when you are parents of small children like we are. It is a service most homeowners can afford and the threshold is lower than investing in, for example, solar panels.

We asked energy expert in electric power engineering Bo Normark what impact smart control of heat pumps can have on the wider energy system.

- The EU has now seriously embraced heat pumps as the obvious replacement for fossil gas heating. But heat pumps are also seen as one of the most important flexibility solutions to manage the increasing variability of the power system.

Sweden has a unique starting point in that we already have a very large number of heat pumps that are currently only used to a very small extent to shift loads in time to reduce power consumption at high loads and/or high electricity prices.

Technical solutions such as Easyserv can quickly make a big difference in the power system by freeing up capacity in the electricity grids at low cost and without manual intervention, while saving consumers money.

Do you also want to test a smart control service? Contact your energy company.