Abstract A trend of increasing electrification will put a pressure on the reliability and stability of electrical distribution grids. Demand response, whereby the demand of electricity is adjusted to the availability, can ease this problem. A lab test setup was built to examine the potential of a heat pump for demand response purposes. With this test setup, it is possible to emulate the behaviour of a heat pump in a single household building equipped with either photovoltaic panels or a residential wind turbine. A market-based multi-agent system was developed to control the active heat pump. The goal of this active control was to limit the peak power demands of the building and to maximise the self-consumption of the locally produced electricity. For two weeks, the coldest winter week and an average winter week, the behaviour of the actively controlled heat pump was compared to a regular, heat-driven controlled heat pump. The tests show that the current heat pump controller is able to shave the power consumption peaks of the building. In this way, active control of the heat pump can diminish extra investment costs for grid reinforcement. Active control also enables self-consumption of locally produced electricity. However, because of the higher energy consumption, the current version of the active heat pump controller is not yet able to significantly decrease the consumption of grey electricity from the grid.