Fan heater: danger from the consumer?

[suchona.kani.z]

Fears of a gas shortage boosted sales of fan heaters and other electric heaters last year: in the first half of last year alone, around 600,000 devices are said to have been sold in German shops, which corresponds to a 35 percent increase in sales compared to the same period last year. By August, this number had risen to almost 1 million, and in many places the electric heaters were completely sold out.

The prospect of winter was particularly worrying for many buyers, who feared high gas prices or a gas shortage and therefore wanted to be prepared for an emergency. At the same time, the media and experts warned of the consequences of excessive use of electric heating: there was talk of an increased risk of fire and even of a blackout, i.e. a large-scale power outage.

But how exactly could a blackout occur?
Electric heaters, whether radiators or fan heaters, all work on the netherlands consumer email list same principle: they convert electricity into heat. While many variants use heating conductors for this, a fan heater draws in ambient air, heats it and distributes it around the room if possible. The advantage: they are usually smaller than other heaters and can be easily transported from one room to the next, which makes them flexible to use.

A blackout is the result of an overload of the power grid, which can be caused by the simultaneous use of many electrical devices or other disruptions in the power grid. Low natural gas reserves, the phase-out of nuclear and coal power, and the volatile feed-in of renewable energies increase the risk of a power outage. In addition to the volatile feed-in, there is also the unpredictable use of electricity, including from electromobility. This means that peak loads at the end of the working day are becoming ever larger and more unpredictable. Although fan heaters have a low power consumption compared to electric cars, there were fears that the devices could unpredictably increase the aforementioned peak loads and thus destabilize the power grid. In an interview, the President of the Federal Network Agency, Klaus Müller, commented on the concerns about power outages caused by fan heaters with the following words: "We have seen the sales figures for fan heaters, but the good thing is: the devices are not switched on. They are in the basement."