watts = volts x amps

It's easy when you know how, but we often don't know, do we?

I do remember learning this at school and it has never really been of any use until I found myself in a business that sold products that used electricity.

Whilst our products are rated in watts we then find that our electrician will tell us that watts = volts x amps and that this is important when we choose switches, timers or thermostats to control our Multiheat Infrared Panels. How do we use this formula to then calculate what we really need.

Well....

It is easy to fall into the trap that are thermostats are created equal. This is not the case.

At Multiheat we take care with this issue and only recommend thermostats that are capable of performing safely with our panels.

It is an easy mistake to assume that the simple wall mounted thermostat often use to control central heating will work with our panels. These thermostats are generally only rated at about 1.5 amps so using the above formula and assuming mains voltage to be 230 volts these will only safely switch a load of 345 watts so would only safely work with our 250 watt panel.

What we need to do is add together all the wattages of the panels we wish to control from a single thermostat or timer and divide by 230 to give us the require current rating in amps.

Therefore 3 of our 850 watt panels connected together will equal 2550 watts, divided by 230 equals about 11 amps so we need to choose a thermostat with at least that rating.

Please get in touch if you need more details or check out our website:-

www.multiheat-energysystems.co.uk