Heat pumps just got a lot cooler . . . and so will your home!
Psst: heat pumps are having an iPhone moment. A mere three years after setting up our factory in Portadown, Northern Ireland, TIME has named the Cosy 12 one of the Best Inventions of 2026.
The Cosy is following in some pretty impressive footsteps: previous winners of TIME Best Invention awards include the original Apple iPhone, the Dyson Air Multiplier and the Tesla Model S.
And just like an iPhone, the “Cosy OS” gets constant over-the-air upgrades — including add-ons that make your heating more efficient.
If that sounds futuristic, wait til you hear about our latest idea …
Meet the Cosy Cooler
Ever seen a gas boiler that cools your house too? Yeah, us neither.
During the record-breaking summer we just sweated through, air conditioners sold out across the country. And British summers are only going to get hotter. So, our R&D engineers in Slough have turned their considerable skills to a new problem: air conditioning.
Traditional air con usually costs between £2,000 and £6,000. Cheap portable air-con units mean trailing an ugly exhaust hose out of an open window (which defeats the point by letting hot air right back in). Neither solution is very elegant.
Now consider the Cosy Cooler, set to launch next year. It’s a compact add-on that can transform an existing Cosy heat pump into a home-cooling system, expected to cost from £500-£600. Live trials have already kicked off. Register your interest below to be the first to hear about Cosy Cooler’s launch, availability and what comes next.
About the size of a tall kitchen bin, the Cosy Cooler can be connected directly to your existing radiator pipework in about three hours, or installed as part of a new Cosy system. It draws warm air from the room, cools it down and blows chilled air back out, sending the unwanted heat out through your pipes to the Cosy unit in the garden.
Depending on your Cosy model, you can run one in a single room (think: that loft bedroom that turns into an oven every July) or up to three across the house. You can even move them between rooms: we can help you get the set-up right.
Seriously smart heating
Gets smarter while you sleep: Unlike gas boilers, Cosy receives automatic software updates over the air, unlocking new features and efficiencies years after it’s installed. The outcome? Your heat pump just keeps getting better and better. Examples of features we’ve already pushed out to existing Cosies include Hush Mode and Smart Heating.
Automatic bargain-hunting: Your Cosy can automatically run your heating and hot water at the cheapest, greenest times, while keeping your home exactly how you like it. Our Cosy Octopus tariff offers three super-cheap off-peak electricity windows every day. 99% of people save, and can cut their bills by hundreds per year: check out the stats on our Cosy Heat Pump Fleet Performance Dashboard
Hello lower bills, goodbye gas rollercoaster
When your home is heated with gas, your bills are inextricably tied to volatile global gas markets, so, as we’ve seen this year, a crisis in a far-off place can send prices soaring overnight. Upgrading to a heat pump changes that, insulating your home from market shocks.
And because a heat pump simply moves heat rather than burning fuel to create it, it uses roughly four times less energy than a gas boiler. Powered by an electricity grid that is increasingly fuelled by homegrown wind and solar, it's a huge step toward real energy security. Combined with smart tariffs, the maths has tipped firmly in favour of electric heating:
99.6% of Octopus heat pump customers pay less to heat their homes than they would with a gas boiler.
Households on the Cosy Octopus tariff save an average of £230 a year compared to a standard gas boiler and slash their home’s carbon emissions by over 80%.
If you ditch your gas meter completely and wave goodbye to the gas standing charge, you’ll save nearly £110 extra.
About 570,000 people have come to us asking about heat pumps over the past 18 months. And once people make the switch, they don’t look back: around 9 in 10 Octopus customers say they’re thrilled with their heat pump.
Greg explains why electrification is the only thing that will bring bills down
A brilliantly British tech boom
Think back to electric cars or solar panels 15 years ago. At first, they were expensive and rare. Then early government support gave manufacturers the certainty to build factories, train engineers, and innovate until costs plummeted and the tech could stand on its own two feet. Greg Jackson, our CEO, recently wrote a piece in the Observer talking about how government support moved the needle on renewables in China.
British heat pumps are speeding down the same road, enabled by the government’s £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) grant.
Thanks to the grant, and the rapid engineering improvements it has unlocked, installation costs are already tumbling. Since we started selling the Cosy, 59% of our standard, like-for-like boiler replacements have cost £3,000 or less with the grant applied*, making them the same price or cheaper than fitting a new gas boiler.
Every home that uses the grant today isn't just getting a great deal on their own heating. They are helping to scale a homegrown industry that supports thousands of UK jobs and gives companies like Octopus the confidence to invest heavily into British R&D and training so that costs keep falling for everyone else.
The new Jackdaw gas field is only expected to create 27 jobs. Government figures estimate that expansion of the heat pump industry could create 500 times that.
Why heat pumps just make sense: follow Greg around the office as he breaks down the cold, hard maths behind the home heating revolution.
A final word from Greg
“Half a million people have asked us about heat pumps in the last 18 months, and the ones who've switched love them.
“The Boiler Upgrade Scheme has helped get us here. We need to keep backing it so heat pumps can scale further and soon become affordable without subsidy – and the way to get there is by growing the market, not pulling support away too soon.”
With costs coming down and innovations like the Cosy Cooler just around the corner, we’re closer than ever to a future where clean, smart, year-round comfort is the standard for every home — no subsidies required. It's no pipe dream: this kind of investment and innovation is proven around the world. People in China and Norway are reaping the benefits of electrifying with EVs and heat pumps on a massive scale.
The iPhone transformed the mobile phone from a basic utility into an ever-improving smart device and heat pumps are doing the same thing for our homes. Britain needs to back them all the way.
To check the facts and find out more go to our blog.
Into the Octoverse
Do heat pumps work in the cold?
We locked our social media manager in a fridge to find out
What real customers think of the Cosy
Meet the folks who’ve already made the switch to a heat pump
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Nicki Slater-Arnold
Energy Writer