On Mon, 2005-03-07 at 20:33 -0500, mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > On Mon, Mar 07, 2005 at 04:27:57PM -0800, Brian Mury wrote: > > On Mon, 2005-07-03 at 17:39 -0500, mark@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > > > An electric heater is not 100% efficient and the components in it are > > > *made* to be efficient for the purposes of heating. (I'm not even sure > > > what 100% efficient means when converting electricity to heat - I > > > would think that it would mean 100% electricity in = 100% heat out - > > > which is not the case at all for any sort of electrical heaters that I > > > am familiar with) > > Of course an electric heater is 100% efficient. A lightbulb is not 100% > > efficient - it's job is to produce light, but it has loss in the form of > > heat. An electric heater's job is to produce heat - and it has loss in > > the form of what? Heat? Every bit of energy consumed by an electric > > heater generates heat. All of it. Every last bit. > > Please tell me where you think the electrical energy that is not > > converted to thermal energy goes. > > Well, now you can show off and explain why some heaters are more efficient > than other heaters. I'm interested. :-) > > Or does it not matter which heater I buy at Canadian Tire - as long as > I look at the capacity rating, I'll know it will cost me the exact > same in electrical costs? > > mark (who might be full of crap in his doubt and disbelief of Brian's > electrical engineering logic claiming that, for a house that requires > heating, running a computer 24/7 is virtually free...) > I am not an electrical engineer, but will step in here anyway. Anything that creates heat has to get that thermal energy dissipated as well ... heat ... Thus, even if not efficient in converting electrical power to heat, if the device produces heat it must get cooled somehow. Once the heat is there it has to be removed. A house that needs heating, and has a computer running 24X7, does have a noticeable transfer of the heating requirements from the heating system to the heat dissipation from the computer. (In the amount of heating the computer actually produces.) While not exactly 100% efficient at converting electricity to heat, all computers do that to some degree, as do all other electrical devices tools/appliances/lights/etc. In fact computers are being designed to minimize heat production -- can we say more efficient at the job and less wasteful (heat to be removed). The bottom line is.... If it produces heat it can be used less expensively when heat is needed in the environment and more expensively when cooling is needed to remove the extra heat. That applies to everything that produces heat in normal operation.
