We have a cheap Halogen heater, but it gives off a lot of light. I was wondering if anyone had any numbers about how efficient they were at heating a room . I tend to use it when I am at the computer I have the telly and the room lights off and I can perfectly see the keyboard by the light of this heater. I am just a tad concerned that a lot of the electricity it uses is being 'lost' as light rather than heat.
All of that light ends up as heat anyway, except possibly for the tiny amount that shines out of the window (that ends up heating the outside world instead of your room).
I don't think you should worry: first, the "light" is a small fraction of the total output*; and second the visible light still ends up as heat in the room (leaving aside the little which goes out of your windows).
*I agree they are bright by the standards of an old-style electric fire but if you put a 1kW halogen alongside a 100 Watt filament lamp you get an idea of how little from the halogen is visible light.soup formulated the question :
Very little of the wattage will be given off as light. Mostly the light is red and infra-red, which makes them quite efficient in heating the bodies which the red and I/R hits, rather than the air.
All plugin heaters are 100% efficient. A fraction of a % is light, it turns to heat when it hits something
NT
All electric heaters are exactly 100% efficient.
Mine hums and drops voltage in the cable. You are exactly wrong.
The sound turns into heat in the room, as does the energy lost in the cable. The only energy supplied by the generator that doesn't turn into heat in the building is the loss in the system from the power station to the consumer unit. Even the air movement generated by a fan heater turns into heat inside the building due to frictional losses in the airflow.
Measure the energy supplied from the wall socket against the total heat energy from all sources relating to the heater, and they are identical.
all ends up as heat mate
Take your pick, either 100% or 30%
100% is because most electric heaters are, the "waste" output ending up as = heat anyway, 30%, because I have a few radiant heaters, some short wavelength IR (like y= ours) and some long wavelength (white ceramic elements, no glow). In empir= ical terms of "How many 500W units I have to turn on to stay warm in the wo= rkshop", the long wavelength heater is about three times as efficient. This= is presumably because it's heating more of me, and less of the intervening= air. That's enough difference that although these long wavelength ones are= n't cheap and I already have loads of old short wavelength IR heaters or fa= n heaters around the place, the energy saving of buying white ceramic heate= rs is worth it.It's also noticeable that the air temperature doesn't rise so much when I h= ave the white IR heater on. So if I'm woodworking and gluing stuff, and I = need the workshop itself to be warm, I use fan heaters instead.
Please do not argue, especially when you are wrong!!
Noise turns to heat in the room. Cable Vdrop and Pdiss don't affect the efficiency of the heater itself. You could argue a tiny bit of light & noise gets out through the window, but the quantity is so miniscule that at least
99.9% efficiency always exists.NT
If if didn't why bother with the heater at all?
Ah, me misguided pedant missile. Must get that serviced :-)
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