eli5: If most electronic appliances’ efficiency losses are through heat, does that mean that electric heaters are 100% efficient?

Question

Edit:

Many thanks for your input everyone!

Just to clarify, I don’t want to take into account the method of generating electricity or shipping it to the home, or the relative costs of gas and electricity. I just want to look at the heater itself! i.e. does 1500W of input into a heater produce 1500W of heat, for example? Or are there other losses I haven’t thought of. Heat pumps are off-topic.

In: 1063

Answer 1

Pretty much. There’s negligible energy lost to other sources – sound, for example if it makes any noise, but basically 100% efficient.

In a similar vein – the old incandescent light bulbs were about 98% efficient, if you used them for heating…

This doesn’t mean electric heaters are necessarily the best way to heat a house using electricity. Provided the temperature difference to outside isn’t too much (outside isn’t much below freezing) heat pumps are much more efficient at heating a space because they use thermodynamic wizardry to *move* rather than *create* heat and can move more heat into your house than an electric heater of the same power could produce.