Electric heating

Electric heating is a technique in which electrical energy is directly transformed into heat energy with an efficiency of close to one hundred percent, using comparatively low-cost components. Heating an area, cooking food, heating water, and heating industrial operations are examples of common usage. An electric heater is a piece of electrical equipment that works by transforming the heat produced by an electric current into another form. Every electric heater has something called an electrical resistor that serves as the heating element. This resistor operates according to the Joule heating principle, which states that any electric current that flows through a resistor will cause that current's electrical energy to be converted into heat energy. The active element in the vast majority of contemporary electric heating systems is nichrome wire. The nichrome wire used in the heating element, which is pictured on the right, is held in place by ceramic insulators.

Because it solely utilises electric power for transferring pre-existing thermal energy from the environment, mostly air, a heat pump may reach an efficiency of roughly 300% for heating, which is equivalent to a performance coefficient of 3.0. The heat pump makes use of an electric motor to drive a refrigeration cycle, which in turn pulls heat energy from a source such as the ground or outside air (or the inside of a refrigerator), and then distributes that heat into the room that needs to be warmed (in case of a fridge, the kitchen). The use of indirect electric heating enables far more efficient use of electric energy than the use of direct electric heating, but it needs much more costly equipment in addition to plumbing. Some heating systems may be turned around and used for air conditioning, cooling the interior area while discharging even hotter air or water outside or into the ground. This allows for more efficient use of the heating system.