Consumer Outreach
Co-ops Warn Against Heater Hype
Colder weather has many of the nation’s electric cooperatives bracing for calls from consumer-members concerned about higher bills.
Large displays of space heaters are common in discount stores as winter approaches. (Photo By: Derrill Holly)
And many concede that some of those calls will come from disappointed members who expected to save money by relying on space heaters to heat their homes.
“During an energy audit, I found three 1,500-watt heaters in the home of a co-op consumer with a high bill complaint,” said Nick Rusnell, an energy advisor with Portland, Mich.-based HomeWorks Tri-County Electric Cooperative. “I did a cost analysis for him and he was shocked.”
“The salesman told him, ‘These heaters will cost you pennies a day.’ They just never said how many pennies,” said Rusnell. “They are efficient, but not very cost-effective. No matter how you slice it, a watt is a watt.”
But space heaters are often far less effective than air source and ground source heat pumps, said Brian Sloboda, a senior program manager with NRECA’s Cooperative Research Network.
“Space heaters are not the ideal solution for heating homes,” Sloboda said.“For every unit of electricity that is consumed by these devices, they produce one unit of heat.”
Some member services representatives have recounted stories of consumer-members who have three to five electric space heaters in their homes and can’t understand why their bills are so high, Sloboda said. “The cost of operating multiple heaters is almost always significantly more than most central heating systems.”
Still, high-end space heaters are heavily marketed during the fall and winter through television infomercials, full-page ads in newspapers and magazines, and marketing presentations designed to resemble news articles.
It doesn’t matter what kind of heater or appliance you have. If you put 1,000 watts in, you get 3,412 British Thermal Units of heat out. Electric resistance heat is 100 percent efficient, said Al Bohl, an energy advisor with Centuria, Wis.-based Polk-Burnett Electric Cooperative.
“This discussion and knowledge cuts through a lot of the marketing hype,” Bohl said. “Hopefully, we get to talk to them before they buy.”
Electric co-ops can obtain customizable copies of the CRN Space Heater Guide to share with their consumer-members by clicking here to visit CRN on cooperative.com (password required). Select “Information for Residential Members” and then “The Efficiency of Space Heaters.”