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No ... you can never convert electricity to heat at > 100% efficiency. What heatpumps do is transfer heat from one place to another while using electricity. An
by venomsnake 12y ago
No ... you can never convert electricity to heat at > 100% efficiency.
What heatpumps do is transfer heat from one place to another while using electricity. And they have some nice limitations on temperature operating ranges.
- hobs 12y agoYeah, I think he is thinking you may be able to re-use some of the heat energy from the output of one machine to be the input on another. This never gets close to over 100% efficiency because of the laws of thermodynamics.
- im3w1l 12y agoYeah ok, sorry for being a little imprecise. Anyway, the main point still stands, you can heat a house more with one Joule of electricity than one Joule of heat.
- kragen 12y agoin context, this is pedantry. using a heat pump, you can add four joules of heat to your house by dissipating one joule of electrical energy. that's four times as efficient as an electric space heater (bar fire) or lightbulb, which are very nearly '100 percent efficient.' in this sense, im3w1l is correct, even though the phrasing could confuse people into thinking that we are talking about perpetual motion machines.