Heat Battery Grant: £2,500 Promised, Not Yet Open

Where the Heat Battery Grant Stands

The Warm Homes Plan, published on 20 January 2026, commits to "new £2,500 grants towards the cost of installing air-to-air heat pumps and heat batteries for central heating". Two technologies, one grant amount, announced together.

Half of that commitment has since gone live. The air-to-air heat pump grant opened on 28 April 2026 and is claimable now through the Boiler Upgrade Scheme. The heat battery half has not opened. It is expected to start once product, design and installation standards are in force — currently anticipated during 2026/27, without a confirmed date.

That distinction matters commercially. Because the announcement covered both technologies in one sentence, some marketing has blurred them together and implied the money is available for heat batteries today. It is not.

What the Warm Homes Plan Actually Says

The plan's commitment is short and specific: £2,500 grants towards installing air-to-air heat pumps and heat batteries for central heating. It does not set a heat battery start date, define which products will qualify, or say how the certification regime will work.

Those gaps are the reason for the delay. Unlike heat pumps, which have a mature MCS certification framework behind them, heat batteries have no equivalent scheme covering product performance, system design and installation quality. Government has been clear that public money will not flow until such standards exist, and building a certification regime takes time.

What a Heat Battery Is

A heat battery — also called a thermal battery or thermal store — stores heat rather than electricity. Electricity heats a storage medium inside an insulated unit, and that stored heat is released later to provide hot water, and in some configurations space heating.

Two broad types exist:

• Phase-change material units. These store heat in a material that melts as it charges and solidifies as it discharges, holding a lot of energy in a compact box. They are typically much smaller than a hot water cylinder of equivalent output.
• Water-based thermal stores. A well-insulated tank of water, charged by electricity or by another heat source, that acts as a buffer for hot water and heating.

The commercial logic is time-shifting. The unit charges when electricity is cheapest — an off-peak or time-of-use tariff overnight, or surplus generation from solar panels during the day — and delivers heat when it is needed. Several manufacturers sell units in the UK; we do not endorse any particular brand, and until the certification regime is published there is no official list of which products will qualify.

Typical installed costs are currently around £3,000 to £6,000, depending on capacity and whether it replaces a cylinder or sits alongside existing heating. Those are typical ranges today, and pricing may move once a grant exists.

How the Grant Will Probably Work

Nothing is confirmed, but the sensible expectation is that the heat battery grant will mirror the mechanics already used across the Boiler Upgrade Scheme, since that is the administrative machinery the air-to-air grant was slotted into:

• A certified installer applies, not you. Under current BUS rules the installer must be MCS-certified and a member of a consumer code — RECC or HIES — and applies to Ofgem for the voucher on your behalf.
• The grant comes off the quote. You pay the balance; the money goes to the installer directly.
• A valid EPC is likely required, issued within the last ten years, as it is for the rest of the scheme.
• A commissioning deadline. BUS vouchers currently require the installation to be commissioned within 120 days.
• Probably no means test. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme has never had one, and the Warm Homes Plan announcement gave no indication of introducing one here.

Treat all of that as informed expectation rather than fact. The certification standards will determine the detail, and until they are published nobody can tell you with certainty which products or installers will qualify.

Who a Heat Battery Will Suit

Assuming the grant arrives broadly as described, the technology fits a few situations well:

• Homes with no space for a hot water cylinder. This is the clearest case. Phase-change units are considerably more compact than a cylinder of comparable output, which matters in flats and small houses where the airing cupboard has already been converted.
• Solar panel owners. Surplus generation that would otherwise be exported at a low rate can be stored as heat and used in the evening, which usually beats the export price.
• Households on time-of-use tariffs. Charging overnight at a cheap rate and using the heat during the day is the core economic argument.
• Off-gas homes. Properties on electric heating or expensive fuels have the most to gain from shifting consumption to cheaper hours — though for most off-gas homes a heat pump remains the larger prize, and oil or LPG homes can currently claim £9,000.
• Homes replacing a failing immersion cylinder where the alternative is like-for-like replacement.

It suits you less well if you already have a well-insulated modern cylinder and no time-of-use tariff, because the savings depend heavily on the price gap between cheap and standard rate electricity.

What to Do Now

There are three sensible responses to a grant that has been announced but not opened.

1. Do not pay a deposit against it. No deposit can secure a grant that does not exist, and money paid now buys you no priority when the scheme opens.
2. Register your interest so you hear when the rules are published. Our eligibility checker takes about a minute and covers every scheme we track, including this one once it opens.
3. Consider the grants that are actually live. If your heating needs replacing now, waiting for an undated scheme is rarely the right call. The £2,500 air-to-air grant is open today; the standard heat pump grants pay £7,500; and oil or LPG homes off the gas grid can claim £9,000 until 31 March 2027.

We check the status of this scheme regularly and will update this page when the standards and start date are published. Until then, the honest position is that the money has been promised and not yet delivered.