THE PROBLEM
A heat pump is efficient — but the building still has a demand profile.
Heat pumps can provide heating and cooling efficiently, but the time they run still matters. In an increasingly electrified system, the challenge becomes broader than choosing an efficient machine.
The IEA's 2026 Heat Pump Monitor highlights thermal storage and digital controls as opportunities to shift heat-pump consumption away from peak periods while maintaining building services.
Thermal storage turns time into something we can engineer.
Water tanks, phase-change materials and other storage approaches can absorb thermal energy and release it later. DOE research on building thermal storage explicitly explores load shifting, peak reduction and integration with heat-pump systems.
That changes the design conversation. Instead of asking only how large the heat pump must be to cover the worst moment, we can consider equipment capacity, storage capacity, building thermal mass, operating schedules and control strategy together.