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"None of the leading reports - by the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the National Infrastructure Commission or BEIS - talk at all about electric storage heating." NETWORK / 15 / APRIL/MAY 2020 or electri cation of the grid (using heat pumps). There are variants on these path- ways, including hybrid heat pumps or dis- trict heating and a growing consensus that a combination of solutions will be required. But what is striking is that none of the lead- ing reports, including those by the Commit- tee on Climate Change (CCC), the National Infrastructure Commission or BEIS, talk at all about electric storage heating. The CCC has commissioned a study on hard-to- decarbonise homes which includes what they term "space constrained" properties for which electric storage heating is seen as the best solution.But these smaller homes have a relatively small carbon footprint anyway which means that the cost in £/CO2e is high and hence they risk being le… until last. Addressing fuel poverty The second, more immediate, challenge is fuel poverty. There are 2.2 million electri- cally heated homes of which 1.4 million use electric storage heaters (with almost all the rest using panel heaters). These homes are predominantly low income and the rate of fuel poverty in electrically heated homes is roughly double that in gas heated homes. Legacy storage heaters have a bad repu- tation. They leak heat throughout the day so that by the time people get home in the evenings there is no heat le… and they end up using expensive supplementary heaters. However modern storage heaters (such the Glen Dimplex Quantum heater) are smart and much less leaky. With the ability to con- trol temperatures by room, programmed for up to a week ahead, electric storage heating really is a much more attractive consumer proposition as the signi cant trials that have taken place have shown. Even retro t- ting of existing heaters with smart controls has been shown to have bene ts. The original DSR product The third challenge facing the sector is how to move to a smart, ' exible energy system. Storage heating scores here too as it really was the original domestic demand side response product. Night storage heaters were introduced in the 1970s to make use of surplus (nuclear) energy at night. And when that led in some areas to unhelpful night time peaks, the radio tele-switch system (RTS) was introduced to spread out the load, by running di˜ erent heat schedules, and with the potential for the DNO to curtail demand in extremis in Load Managed Areas where otherwise they would need to carry out reinforcement. Looking more closely at the electric stor- age heating and RTS experience highlights several issues that will need to be addressed if we are to deliver domestic ' exibility. First, it remains the case that customers do not understand even the basic Economy 7 tari˜ s that are used by most storage heating customers – what times they ap- ply, whether hot water and other uses are included or just the heaters – and how to work the controls on the heating. Suppli- ers need to get better at helping customers understand these more complex tari˜ s. Secondly, with the loss of the RTS in 2022, networks like SSEN are trying to work out how to avoid having to carry out expensive reinforcement. This brings to life the debates around the role of the DSO and whether ' exibility should be delivered through price signals or contracts. Price signals can get load to shi… on mass – to charge up the heaters overnight in this case – but what they can't deliver is the diversity of demand networks depend on, or very localised shi… s in demand to deal with par- ticular constraints. For these it seems likely SSEN will need to put in place contracts. That would cost them more (as they cur- rently get this ' exibility for free) but would ultimately be a fairer solution. Thirdly, that still leaves a question as to whether, as now, the networks should have the right in extremis to curtail heat demand. This is an active debate at present in the context of EV charging where SSEN has put forward a code modi cation to allow them to over-ride EV charging schedules. This has attracted some pushback from both Ofgem (who would like to see such services competitively tendered) and from Citizens Advice (who would like to see customers having an over-ride). However, what it really boils down to is where "emergency" rules come in. The events of last August are a reminder that ultimately DNOs do have to shed load when told to do by the system op- erator to keep the overall system standing. At present that is done in a blanket way but those events should be prompting a wider re' ection on what load shedding looks like in a smart world and whether shedding par- ticular types of load ahead of others would be one way forward. Finally, there are wider issues that im- pact on whether electric storage heating will sink or swim. These include rules around smart metering, network charging, appli- ance and building standards, consumer in- formation and funding. Each of these policy areas is pursuing thinking in isolation but an e˜ ective heat decarbonisation strategy requires whole systems policy thinking. Modern storage heaters can provide a much better experience for customers who have historically struggled to keep warm and can, at the same time, provide a ' ex- ible solution that supports the shi… to heat decarbonisation. Policy makers should ac- knowledge the role they can play and work to keep that option on the table. Maxine Frerk's report, An Electric Heat Path- way: Looking Beyond Heat Pumps, was funded by SSE Networks and will be available from the ENA Smarter Networks Portal. Consumers need more help using heaters DECARBONISATION OF HEAT

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