NewScientist The Last Word - Tag 'heaterefficiency' details

Tag 'heaterefficiency' details

Be informed on updates to this list by RSS

1 matches found

Does it make any sense to save energy while electric heaters are on?

I live in Russia and we have a real full-sized Russian Winter this year. This means the central heating doesn't cope and you have to use electric heaters in addition to get your rooms warm.

As far as I understand, when you fail to save energy, it is lost as heat. So does it make sense to use energy-saving lamps instead of bulbs, turn off computers when they are not needed, and so on, when in the morning I turn on a heater and wait till the office gets warm. Maybe if I used a lot of energy-wasting stuff (taking the kettle and the toaster from the kitchen into my office, of course) I could turn the heater off earlier and the result in warmth as well as in needed electricity would be just the same?

Oh, and can there be any "more" or "less" effective electric heaters if all "lost" energy turns into heat anyway?

(no votes)

There are 2 answer(s) for this question. View answers | Submit an answer

Answered by Bodenca
on 2010-02-11 10:52:53

(no votes)

I agree with the assumptions behind your question. A supposedly more efficient heater is merely one that reaches working temperature faster, so you gain when you switch on and lose out on the storage heater effect by the same amount when you switch off. There is no point in worrying which appliance is converting electrical energy to thermal, as they all do in the end. The intelligent approach is not to purchase more expensive appliances, that probably wasted more energy in their production, if you always have heating on. Of course, if you use air conditioning in summer, that is a completely different matter.

View | Submit your reply