|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
False Advertising Claims Are Everywhere Regarding New Portable Electric Heaters It seems that everywhere you turn these days there are wildly exaggerated claims being advertised in the print and electronic media regarding portable electric heaters. You will hear or read a wide variety of claims, ranging from “exclusive design” to “Amish farmer discovers heating secrets” to manufacturer claims of cutting heating costs up to 50 percent with “space-age technology. ”Here are the facts pertaining to these false advertising claims. There are three types of electrical portable heaters. They are the high-temperature radiant heaters, fan-forced heaters and the natural convection heaters. Each of the three designs uses the same process of electric resistance heating. Because all of the electric heaters use this same process they all have the same efficiency - 100 percent. You may think that 100 percent efficiency is great, but when you take a closer look at the numbers, you can save a lot of money by investing your money in appliances that heat much more efficiently than these portable units. Most air source heat pumps operate well above the 300 per cent efficiency mark over 80 percent of the time they are in operation. The absolute lowest a heat pump will ever run is100 per cent efficient. Remember, when dealing with electric resistance heating a Watt is a Watt, no matter how it is delivered. Whatever the heater’s size, shape or marketing claim, the amount of heat coming out is the same as the amount of electricity going in. Therefore, any heater with a rating of 1,500 watts on the nameplate will deliver the same amount of heat, no matter what they look like. What is different is the method used to transfer the warm from the heating elements to the area the unit is located in. Last winter we received a telephone call from a member pertaining to what he felt was a bill that was too high as a result of the six “high efficiency” portable heaters he had purchased last fall. One of the employees in our member services department showed the member just how much those units cost to operate. Under last year’s rate the costs to operate the units were as follows:
One of this member’s portable heaters had been placed in a crawl space where there was no other heat to support the unit and it probably operated close to 24 hours a day for an extended period of time. Just remember...all three types of portable heaters are rated at 1,500 watts, so they all deliver exactly the same amount of heat energy. The only difference is how the heat is conveyed to the user, either by a focused radiant heat, or by warming the air that travels across the heating surface. (Ed. note: Some of the information for this article was provided by Richard Hiatt, CEO of the National Food and Energy Council.) |
|||||||||||||||
|
PRINT
THIS WINDOW
|
