Do Infrared Heaters Use a Lot of Electricity? How Much Do They Cost to Run and Do They Save Money?
With the rising cost of energy, many people are looking for cheaper ways to heat their homes and businesses. If you have considered infrared heating, the cost of electricity might put you off.
But don’t worry, infrared heaters are incredibly efficient. They’re designed to keep a space warm while using as little electricity as possible. This makes them much cheaper to run than central heating, space heating, and air source heat pumps.
If you’re wondering ‘Do infrared heaters use a lot of electricity?’, this article will show you.
How Much Electricity Does Infrared Heating Use?
How much electricity an infrared heating system uses will depend on many factors. The size of your home, the rooms within it, and how long you run it will play a major part. That’s the short answer.
However, the long answer is a little more complicated. Especially if you don’t know how infrared heating works.
It makes sense to assume that an electricity-based heating system would be expensive to run. But the magic is in how infrared heaters convert that electricity into heat. That’s what makes them so efficient.
How Much Does Infrared Heating Cost to Run?
If you’re looking for a quick way to calculate the cost of running infrared heating, here’s a simple way to work it out;
Heater Output (kW) x Hours in Use x Cost Per kW Hour = Daily Cost
So let’s say you;
- Have a room that’s 5 metres long, 5 metres wide, and 2.4 metres high.
- Want to heat it for 6 hours a day, and
- Pay £0.29 per kW for your electricity (the UK national average).
If you use our infrared heating calculator, you’ll see we recommend using two 900-watt heaters.
Here’s the calculation for infrared heating:
- 1.8kW (Heater Output) x 6 (Hours in Use) = 10.8kW hour
- 10.8kWh x £0.29 (Cost Per kW Hour) = £3.12 per day
Compare this to gas central heating. A typical boiler uses 24kW per hour and the average price of gas is £0.07 per kW per hour.
Here’s the calculation for gas central heating:
- 24kW (Boiler Output) x 6 (Hours in Use) = 144kW hour
- 144kWh x £0.07 (Cost Per kW Hour) = £10.08 per day
And that’s not all.
Because infrared heaters so efficient, they often don’t need to use their full wattage to heat a room comfortably. In many cases, they might only use half or even a third of their full wattage.
This could bring the daily running cost of infrared heating down to £1.56 or even £1.04 a day.
Of course, the size of the rooms in your home, how much you pay for electricity will affect how much you pay.
Why Infrared Heaters Are So Efficient
Infrared heaters are efficient for several reasons;
Radiant Warmth
Most heating systems are convection-based. They work by heating air which then circulates around the room (often leading to uneven temperatures and energy loss).
Infrared heat uses electromagnetic radiation to transfer heat directly to objects and people. It passes through the air, travelling around molecules instead of colliding with and heating them.
Then, when it collides with a solid object, like a wall, furniture, or a person, it heats it up. Just like the heat from the sun passes through space and warms the earth.
This reduces energy consumption, making them far more efficient other types of heating.
Thankfully, infrared heaters don’t emit UV light like the sun. This makes them perfectly safe to use.
No Heat Loss
With gas central heating, heat loss is unavoidable through poorly insulated pipes, draughts, and ceilings.
Because infrared heating doesn’t rely on warming the air via combustion, there is no heat loss. They are 100% efficient, turning every watt of electricity into useable heat.
This means they don’t need to work as hard as convection heaters of the same wattage.
Zonal Heating
Gas central heating relies on pumping hot water through pipework to heat your home or office. This means you have to run that heat around a full property just to heat one room.
Infrared heaters work independently of each other. As a result, you use ‘zonal heating‘ to heat your property on a room-by-room basis.
They also perfect for open plan living because you can put them in the busiest or coldest areas. This is also true for large commercial and outdoor areas that are extremely difficult to heat using conventional methods.
Custom Programming
You can pair our infrared heaters with external thermostats and controllers. This gives you complete freedom over how you heat your premises.
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- Remote controllers – create custom heating schedules, set timers and control your heating from your chair.
- Smart controllers – pair your heaters with an app or smart speaker. This allows you to make changes to your heating over Wi-Fi, no matter where you are. Create schedules or make changes to them on the fly so you never waste money on heating empty rooms.
DIY Friendly
Most of our infrared heaters are ready to install out of the box. Whether freestanding, wall mounted, or ceiling mounted, our products are easy to install. There’s no complication wiring or instructions.
If you’re heating your whole home with infrared, we recommend professional, hard-wired installation. This will give you as wireless finish and prevent overloading your mains and tripping your electrics.
However, if you’re just buying one or two heaters, all you need to do is plug them in.
Maintenance Free
One of the biggest benefits of infrared heaters is that they’re maintenance free.
Don’t contain any moving parts and they don’t need a combustible fuel source. As a result, there’s not much to go wrong, they don’t need servicing, there’s no danger of carbon monoxide leaks.
All your infrared heater needs in terms of maintenance, is cleaning with a dry cloth every so often.
Save Money With Infrared Heating
Infrared heating is guaranteed to save you money on heating your home, office, and outdoor areas. We have a wide range of infrared heaters including wall mounted heaters, ceiling heaters as well as mirror and picture heaters as well as outdoor heaters.
