How heat pumps maintenance can bridge the energy efficiency gap

For energy managers responsible for large-scale heat pump systems, commissioning is only the first step in a whole lifecycle journey. True efficiency depends on the type of maintenance chosen and is the most important energy management decision you can make, says Valgard Bertschinger, Head of Business Development – Operations, Star Refrigeration.

Star Refrigeration has designed, installed and maintained more than 100MW of industrial heat pump capacity across the UK and Europe over the past 17 years, with a further 30 years of experience in industrial refrigeration before that. Across those installations which include district heating networks, food manufacturing, agriculture, process industries, the systems that continue to perform are the systems that are actively managed.

The hidden cost of passive ownership

A recent Star Refrigeration survey of UK manufacturers found that many organisations have only a limited understanding of how much heat they use or how efficiently their heating systems are operating. Heating systems across the sample were found to be running at an average utilisation rate of just 24%, pointing to significant levels of oversized infrastructure running below optimal efficiency.

Often this performance degradation occurs gradually; factors such as changing load profiles, component wear, refrigerant charge drift and control creep lead to erosion of the as-built system efficiency. Left unmanaged, they increase energy consumption and erode the carbon savings that made the heat pump investment compelling in the first place. At a more basic level, poor maintenance regimes can increase running costs by more than 30%.

Maintenance as an energy management tool

StarCare, Star Refrigeration’s maintenance and optimisation programme for heat pumps and refrigeration systems, was built on the recognition that long-term energy performance depends on proactive intervention. It combines condition-based maintenance with continuous performance monitoring and optimisation, enabling engineers to detect early signs of degradation and correct them before they register as energy waste.

Central to StarCare is Ethos, Star’s data-driven performance optimisation technology, which complements remote monitoring systems rather than replacing them, providing an additional layer of control and energy savings.  Ethos continuously analyses operational data of plant against its ‘digital twin’, a model of how the plant should be performing under design conditions. This means it can identify inefficiencies that would never trigger an alarm: subtle deviations from optimal operation that a standard building management system would not flag, but that are costing money in real time.

The numbers that make the case

The energy impact of this approach is remarkable. Across StarCare-supported sites, customers typically see annual electricity cost savings of between 10% and 30% compared to unoptimised operation. When Star Refrigeration worked with a major UK supermarket across eight temperature-controlled distribution sites, they achieved an average energy saving of 10% – a result that demonstrates the scale of what structured monitoring and maintenance can deliver.

For energy teams responsible for reporting against ESOS obligations, carbon reduction targets or internal sustainability KPIs, these are significant savings.

On a large industrial heat pump installation, a 10% improvement in electrical efficiency can represent hundreds of thousands of pounds of annual cost reduction as well as a sizeable reduction in Scope 2 emissions. Investing in a structured maintenance and monitoring programme typically delivers payback in months rather than years.

The energy benefits of capital planning

One of the ways energy efficiency can be protected is through the financial discipline of capital planning. As heat pump installations age, the question of component replacement becomes an inevitable one, but is often poorly managed. Reactive procurement of major components is expensive, and damaging to energy performance in the period before replacement occurs.

StarCare’s capital planning capability embeds replacement of critical components into a structured financial framework, giving customers clear visibility of expenditure at three, five, ten and fifteen-year horizons. This transforms plant ownership from an exercise in firefighting into a disciplined, predictable process, allowing finance teams and operations managers to plan with confidence. For energy managers, this matters because it creates a direct link between asset condition, energy performance and capital budget – the three variables that define the total cost of heat pump ownership.

The case for energy management

The potential of large-scale heat pumps as a decarbonisation tool across UK industry and infrastructure is becoming well recognised. What is less well understood is that the energy performance of these systems over their operational lives is not fixed at commissioning; it is determined by how they are managed. Whereas the average lifespan of heat pump plant is around 15 – 20 years, this can be significantly extended through proactive maintenance.

However the value of this approach is only as strong as the engineering capability behind it. Sites such as the Queens Quay Energy Centre in Clydebank – the UK’s largest river-source heat pump installation at 5.3MW – and a 33MW greenhouse facility in East Anglia operating four parallel ammonia heat pumps, are currently maintained through StarCare. Both benefit from remote monitoring, predictive maintenance schedules and full capital planning support, with Queens Quay additionally using Ethos to inform maintenance decisions, leading to increased energy optimisation.

The opportunity is optimisation; it is this structured programme of monitoring, data-informed decisions, maintenance and capital planning that keeps heat pump systems performing at or above their design specification year on year. Critically, StarCare can be applied to heat pump equipment from any manufacturer, making it relevant to energy managers regardless of which technology they have installed.

Designing and installing a heat pump involves crucial decision-making, but is only the start of the conversation. The real value lies in ensuring that the system continues to deliver on its energy and carbon promises throughout its operational lifetime. That requires treating heat pump maintenance not as a cost of ownership, but as an energy management discipline – one that ensures safe, reliable and compliant operation over the life of the asset. By reducing energy consumption and avoiding unplanned downtime, this approach helps customers maintain performance, control costs and achieve the lowest total cost of ownership.