Electric flow boilers

Electric ‘Flow Boilers’…

These are (or ought to be) simple devices that heat water electrically as it is pumped around a radiator circuit. In reality they are usually stuffed with electronics and its difficult to fully understand what it all does.

They do the same job as a gas boiler, i.e. heat the water in real time as it is pumped through by a circulating pump, but using daytime electricity instead. However, daytime electricity is typically three times the price of gas (per unit of energy), so they are shockingly expensive to run.

The main application for electric flow boilers is in modern highly insulated new-build flats where the heat load is very small, and there is no gas supply. With a small heat load the cost of heating with electricity becomes less significant.

The market leader in flow boilers is the Amptec electric flow boiler by Heatrae Sadia, but there are several other makes and models available. The Amptec is strikingly small, being a box about 6 inches square and 3 ft tall. Other models are bigger.

All electric boilers are 100% efficient in there technical sense, because all the electricity they burn is converted into heat.

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