The Future of Hot Water Isn’t a Monologue
Why Mixergy’s Confidence Is Deserved - and Why the Industry Needs More Humility
Why Mixergy’s Confidence Is Deserved - and Why the Industry Needs More Humility
There is something fascinating about watching a company speak with clarity and confidence about their role in the future. There’s an energy to it. A swagger. A kind of practised inevitability baked into every sentence.
On the surface, that’s exactly what Mixergy brought to its panel at the recent industry event (ElementalLondon) a combination of technical credibility, policy proximity, and a product that genuinely reshaped how many of us think about stored hot water.
Hot water matters. Grid flexibility matters. Thermal storage matters. And Mixergy has played a meaningful role in forcing the national conversation to take cylinders seriously again.
But something else was happening in that hall, something that revealed a deeper tension in the retrofit sector. It's the tension between the company on the stage and the company in the audience.
Between confidence and humility.
Between the belief that you are the answer … and the quiet realisation that you might just be one of many.
The irony was impossible to miss.
A few metres away from the Mixergy panel sat the Managing Director of a company building one of the most elegant integrated heat pump + cylinder systems the UK market has seen. A system that challenges some of the assumptions Mixergy expressed on stage, not confrontationally, but structurally.
And that contrast is the story that matters.
The Return of the Cylinder – and the Rise of the Narrative
For two decades, the UK drifted steadily away from stored hot water. Combination boilers took over, space pressures increased, and the cultural memory of the old copper cylinder never quite matched the ambition of the emerging low-carbon era.
Then the logic reversed. Through necessity. Decarbonisation forced it to reverse.
Look at the book ends on this discussion; Flexible load. Thermal storage. Demand-side response. Curtailment mitigation. Grid balancing.
Suddenly the humble cylinder became politically fashionable again. And into that rediscovered relevance stepped Mixergy.
To give them credit - and fairness is essential here - Mixergy didn’t ride a trend. They created it. Their early work in adaptive heating, smart charging, and thermal stratification showed the industry what a next-generation cylinder could be.
Their data stories landed. Their decarbonisation narratives landed. Their public engagement is exceptional.
They earned the right to speak confidently.
But confidence in this sector has a habit of shading into something else: the impression that one approach might be positioned as a central pathway. And that’s where the room began to shift.
When a Narrative Becomes a Worldview
During the panel, a handful of phrases stood out. Not aggressive. Not unfair. But suggestive:
“They’re not smart unless they’re on Mixergy.”
“Every cylinder in the future will have to do what ours does.”
“Manufacturers now have a narrow window to catch up.”
These claims are not untrue.
But they are worldview statements, not neutral observations.
They speak from a position of ownership, as if Mixergy’s perspective naturally shapes the boundaries of the discussion.
This is where the industry benefits from pausing for reflection.
Because technical leadership is one thing.
Architectural inevitability is another.
And architectural inevitability can gently narrow the field of innovation if not held lightly.
The Company in the Audience
While Mixergy was explaining why all cylinders must become flexible grid assets, a different philosophy of hot water and heat pumps sat quietly in the audience.
Becker Wolf - a company whose integrated heat pump + cylinder system makes a different statement entirely:
Not: “Your cylinder is a grid asset we orchestrate.”
But: “Your home should be a coherent system that simply works.”
Where Mixergy leans into grid-first optimisation, Becker Wolf leans into homeowner-first integration. Where Mixergy emphasises orchestration, Becker Wolf emphasises simplicity. Where Mixergy sees the cylinder as the beating heart of flexibility, Becker Wolf sees it as one component in a seamless, intelligent architecture.
Two products.
Two philosophies.
One hall.
It mattered that both were there.
Because the presence of Becker Wolf - silent, observing, confident enough not to need a microphone - quietly complemented Mixergy’s confident narrative.
It reminded the room that the future isn’t owned by whoever speaks loudest.
It’s shaped by whoever builds the system people actually want to live with.
Mixergy: Smart Cylinder Specialists
A Sector Prone to Absolutism
The UK retrofit sector has a behavioural quirk I’ve never quite understood: the need to treat every technical advance as a totalising truth. The silver bullet paradox.
Heat pumps were that truth.
MVHR was that truth.
Battery storage was that truth.
Hydrogen (for a brief and chaotic moment) tried to be that truth.
And now cylinders - smart cylinders, connected cylinders, flexible cylinders - are being framed as the next totalising truth.
This mindset creates a subtle but dangerous gravitational pull:
- “If the grid needs flexibility, all homes must provide it.”
- “If cylinders store heat, then all homes must have cylinders.”
- “If Mixergy leads the field, the field must follow Mixergy.”
But energy systems never work like that. They operate as ecosystems, not hegemonies.
A mature, resilient energy transition doesn’t need one architecture.
It needs many.
Consumers could make that choice;
Stored hot water.
Instantaneous heat exchangers.
Compact thermal stores.
Phase-change batteries.
Integrated heat pump systems.
Thermal flywheels.
Grid-responsive edge control.
Distributed microstorage.
The energy future will not be monolithic.
It will be plural.
And that plurality demands humility - even from the companies who helped lead the last phase of innovation.
Courage vs. Humility
To give Mixergy fair treatment: it takes courage to innovate in cylinders. It takes courage to be early in a market nobody cared about for twenty years. It takes courage to build a platform when the government didn’t even mention hot water in its early flexibility frameworks.
Courage deserves recognition.
But courage without humility becomes a barrier - not a catalyst.
The hot water sector is on the cusp of something transformative:
- New compact heat pump cylinder combos
- Pre-integrated intelligence at appliance level
- Automated optimisation without consumer engagement
- Household systems designed around lived behaviour, not grid needs
- Plug-and-play thermal stores
- Emerging nano-store concepts
- Modular electrified replacement kits
And the truth is simple:
No company has all the answers - not Mixergy, not Becker Wolf, not anyone.
The future will come from the cross-pollination of these ideas, not the dominance of one.
Why Humility Matters Right Now
We are entering a period where regulation, consumer distrust, evolving grid realities, and market pressure are converging.
Everyone is watching the same signals:
- The BUS review
- The upcoming changes in MCS
- The new government’s decarbonisation priorities
- The expected redesign of ECO
- The affordability crisis
- The electrification bottleneck
- Regional grid constraints
- The quiet rise of installer fatigue
- And the awkward reality that consumer adoption is slowing
In this moment, the industry does not need a messiah. It needs a coalition.
And coalitions don’t form around monologues. They form around humility, open architectures, and interoperable thinking.
The Lesson of Elemental London
What this session taught us was something simple but profound:
Innovation is not a competition between products.
It is a competition between ways of thinking.
Mixergy’s way of thinking is ambitious, system-level, and technically sophisticated.
Becker Wolf’s way of thinking is integrated, practical, and installer-aligned.
Both approaches matter.
But when any single narrative becomes dominant, others can naturally receive less attention - and that’s when innovation can lose momentum.
What we need instead is this:
Companies bold enough to speak with confidence and humble enough to acknowledge the limits of their own architecture.
Because the future of hot water won’t be built by the loudest product in the room.
It will be built by the systems that consumers trust, installers can fit, and policymakers can understand.
The next chapter of the UK’s decarbonisation journey requires courage but it's tricky line to be the best, avoid becoming a 'tall poppy' and deliver a message consumers can believe in.
And Finally - The Irony Worth Noticing
And there was one final twist to the day — the kind of industry irony you couldn't script if you tried.
Because the footage from the Elemental London session, the very panel where Mixergy spoke as if the future was already decided, was sponsored by Becker Wolf. They funded the recording because they wanted the conversation to reach a wider audience. They believed in opening the room, broadening the dialogue, letting more voices in.
And yet when the cameras rolled, they were not on stage. They were not holding a microphone. They were not shaping the narrative.
They were in the audience - quietly listening to a panel that unintentionally positioned their own integrated heat-pump-and-cylinder system as an unspoken counterpoint.
It was a moment that crystallised the whole dynamic:
The company funding openness was sitting quietly in the seats;
the company advocating inevitability was speaking from the platform.
If you ever needed a metaphor for where the sector stands - and where it could go next - Elemental London proved it.
