The Graham Hendra Awards 2023.

Welcome to the 2nd Graham Hendra awards, the informal awards ceremony for all things renewable. The awards are completely biased, I choose the winners, so I am judge jury and hangman. The categories are fluid and this year include:

Heat pump champion, Coolest person in renewables, Product of the year renewable, Idiot of the year renewable, Worst heat pump on the market, Unavailable product of the year, Innovation of the year renewable and a new category honourable mentions.

So lets start

Award no 1:Heat pump champion

Our industry is full of people who plod along accepting the status quo, installing the same kit they have always installed and question nothing they are told. But there are a few people out there who dont like what they hear, they question the perceived wisdom and push the boundaries of what is accepted and done. This years winner of the heat pump champion award is some one I lock horns with weekly on Linked in, we disagree on pretty much everything, except our love of this technology.

Brendon Uys TMIET of Heacol is deservedly this years winner, he's massively devoted to our technology and pushing it forward, making it better. He is a thorn in the side of stubborn manufacturers, wholesalers and heat pump know all like me, he's very happy to tell you you've done an awful job but that's what we need, our industry needs mavericks and people who dont take no for an answer. These are the people we will look to in later years as the ones who made a difference. Well done Brendon, I'm looking forward to sparring with you in 2023.

Award no 2 is a new one. Coolest person in renewables.

This summer I attended two events organised by Malle London , the Malle Rally and the Malle Mile. Both are crazy motorcycle events which were amazing fun, but nothing to do with renewables, however one of the highlights was meeting Sune Nightingale or DJ Sune as we call him. He was at Malle, spinning the wheels of steel in a converted car keeping us entertained. It was great to meet Sune on both occasions and put a face to the name. See renewables dudes and dudettes can be cool if you work at it.

Award no 3 Product of the year renewable.

This one is pretty predictable, its a new heat pump, To be honest it was a major shock to me. I had a meeting with some of the senior managers at Samsung just before covid and they told me there would never be a high temperature unit. In Summer 2022 when rumours started circulating i got excited. Back then it went under the name of HTLN or high temperature low noise. The award goes to the Samsung HTQ or high temperature quiet.

High temperature heat pumps are not new, they have been around a while, but this is bringing the technology into the main stream for a more affordable price. As heat pumps offer higher temperatures it means pretty much all houses are or can be heat pump ready.

I absolutely love this thing, its amazing, its so quiet that it makes a mockery of MIS020 the noise standard, with this unit you its always a pass. Its hot as hell and its dead simple to install. I think we are going to see a lot of these installed with no buffer, plate or low loss and an open system using the Samsung controller. Nice and easy if you know how. Welcome to the new era of the heat pump which can work just like a boiler. You watch all the manufactures follow Samsungs lead in 2023.

Award 4 Idiot of the year renewable,

last year this was an easy one, Bisby was shooting his face off telling the world heat pumps dont work, but thankfully he's gone quiet and disappeared. So I struggled this year. I'm going to give the award to us the people of the UK. This year the cost of gas has increased by a factor of ouch...

So what did we do? Obviously we reacted by turning down our boilers, wore more jumpers and reduced our gas consumption to absorb the price rise. Did we hell? We all moaned like mad and said it was unfair, kept the stat exactly where it was before and got the government to cap the gas prices . We have all (me included) proved we are going to do nothing about our consumption, we want our energy and we want it cheap. We proved we talk a good job but we dont want to be chilly. what a bunch of bullshitters.

Award 4 Worst heat pump on the market. Its been a weird year, lots going on, lots of new kit, but there is no standout winner this year,

Yes I know Mitsubishi's 14 kW unit is celebrating its 100th year since it was introduced and Worcester still have the Leviathan, but no one buys it. The crap units have quietly disappeared into the mists of time, replaced by much better, quieter, smaller, units. Its called progress. So I'm sorry to say there is nothing deeply offensive out there, sorry to disappoint you all. But dont worry, I intend trawling the trade fairs next year there are sure to be some monsters hiding somewhere.

Award 5 Unavailable product of the year.

This year there has been a clear winner here, in Spring as the gas prices rose we saw a massive upswell in interest in solar PV, this continued right through that roasting summer. All the suppliers struggled to keep up with demand, getting kit was a nightmare. Everyone who worked in solar was flat out, or would have been if they could have bought the right kit. But the heart-breaking part was the bit holding everyone up are the simple fixings. Solar panels are held on the roof with aluminium channel called Rail and fixings called mids and ends.

All year rail, mids and ends have been rarer than rocking horse droppings. In Autumn i decided to go to China and buy a container of them and sort the problem out, These fittings are nothing special, just a simple piece of aluminium so ideal to ship in bulk, but........ there is a catch. All kit used on a UK solar PV installation has to be certified and signed off. It has to be Solar Kosher. If you go to China or anywhere else and buy fixings that are not "approved" no one can use them. What an insane system. Bureaucracy slowing down renewable implementation, welcome to green Britain.

Award 6 Innovation of the year renewable

In the UK we tend not to buy anything with our own cash. Over 90% of new cars are bought on Finance, I bought a watch on zero percent in the Summer and B and Q will offer you a kitchen on a monthly pay scheme. But in renewables we still ask the home owner for the cash up front. ITs been a while coming but financing renewable installations is one more hurdle that needs to be over come.

This award goes to two companies both of who I'm very fond of. The first is Evergreen Energy for offering finance packages to customers who choose to pay for their renewables on a monthly basis and the second is Heatio who offer homeowners a free heat pump installation but pay for the heat they provide using heat as a service.

Both models offer renewable solutions to people who cant afford to splash 10 or 15 grand on a heat pump in one go.

And finally and a new category honourable mentions

Our industry does have some genuinely nice and decent people in it, people who want to push great tech out into the field and make a difference. I've been working on a project called project impossible where we are taking my sons 1930s house and trying to make it renewable and green without costing a fortune and using all the latest tech to do it.

I want to thank Marko Cosic from meterpoint for helping with heat and electric meters and tons of advice about what to measure an how. The easiest internet enabled devices I've ever worked with, literally plug in and go.

James Beresford at Intatech for helping with flexi hoses, a combined filter ball and mag cleaner which is awesome and fixings to help us install a heat pump in place of the 50 year old gas boiler.

Andrew Bissell at Sunamp for helping us with a sun amp cylinder replacement specially designed to work with low temperature heat pumps to replace the 50 year old copper cylinder.

Cameron Loggenberg from Shower save for a water to water heat recovery system allowing us to save energy making hot water by recovering it from waste water.

And most importantly YOU. Thank you for reading all my blogs, arguing with me and buying my books. I love doing this blog every week and I get a real buzz out of people coming up to speak to me and saying they read this rubbish. Thanks so much you've made my year.

Ok so now I'm going on holiday for a few weeks, im not taking the mobile or the laptop so there wont be any linked in from me, its time we had a trial separation, but I will be back mid January, I'm already planning a blog about the crazy world of Hydrogen and my new job....

Im very happy and proud to tell you I'm starting a part time role teaching at Eastleigh college of further education, Its my dream job. I'm teaching the learners (I know they are students really) refrigeration theory and thermodynamics. I need the holiday to read this.

Happy xmas and New year and see you on the other side.