Stop Wasting Money on Electricity! Your Guide to Identifying & Unplugging Standby Pow

[tvguy]

Because I heat with electricity, turning off stuff does not help at all in the winter. For every Kilowatt hour not used on a light or appliance, means I have to make up for it with a kilowatt hour of the electric heater.

I don't think so. Look at it this way. You have an 1000 watt electric motor and a 1000 watt electric heater.

The motor is using power to make the rotor turn to power some device.
The energy used is mostly to create horsepower. The motor will generate some heat but no where near as much as if you had a 1000 watt heater.

  You are only gaining some heat that is generated by these vampire/phantom loads the rest is being used to feed these  tiny LED's or memory or clocks.

Yes the 1000 watt electric motor make mechanical energy which decays into thermal energy.

If you take a glass of water and start stirring it up, it increase in temperature, by the amount of energy put into it.

Now maybe if you used some energy to move something outside the house. Like a pressure pump to shoot water out the window. Then yes, the energy in the water left the house.
But say a fan pushing air around. The air movement will slowly release it's kinetic energy back into the form of entropy (heat).

LED light eventually shines onto an object and is absorbed, again transferring the energy back to heat. (light that leaves by a window is lost, but that is not much energy at all)

You could use a motor to compress air and take the compressed air out side and release it. That would loose energy, but if you let it go in the house, it turns into thermal energy again.

Yes the 1000 watt electric motor make mechanical energy which decays into thermal energy.

 The electric current  made the motor turn. It didn't create heat, it created horsepower.

If what you are saying was true I could  run a 1000 watt electric motor in my house and heat my house just as efficiently as a 1000 watt heater.

The energy used to make the motor move is not creating an equal amount of heat.



But say a fan pushing air around. The air movement will slowly release it's kinetic energy back into the form of entropy (heat)

If that was true we could heat our homes with fans. But you can't.

How many watts is your fan?

Your electric motor created horse power which was used to create kinetic energy (moving mass). Friction  caused the mass to stop moving. This friction converted the kinetic energy into heat.
Unless you stored the energy, and haven't released the energy, then it decayed into heat.

 From what you are claiming the 1000 electric motor in a room creates the same amount of heat as a 1000 watt heater.
There's just no way that's true.

What you are saying is that ALL the energy used to turn a fan or a motor "decays into thermal energy."
 There's just no way that is possible.
Just get a 1000 watt motor and try and heat a room with it. Then use a 1000 watt heater. And see which one heats the room the best.