Difference Between Power Loss and Heat Dissipation in Electrical Engineering (Verlustleistung)

Hello all!

Since this is my first post, I shall use it to introduce myself... ;-)

I am a native English speaker living in Austria who translates technical documentation from German to English. This runs the gamut from software and programming languages to PLCs, HMI and motion. I should mention here that I don't really have a engineering background. I grew up during the Age of Personal Computers, programming in BASIC (and playing games) on my Commodore 64, and can hold my own with software, PC hardware, etc. (though I no longer program -- still the concepts never really change).From time to time, I run across words in German that have multiple meanings in English and it's hard to figure out what it meant.

So in addition to learning more about electrical engineering from this forum, I hope to be able to pick your brains when I'm not quite grasping a concept. I hope you don't mind ;-)

At the moment, this has to do with the German word "Verlustleistung", which literally translates as "Lost power" (or "power which is lost"). I think in most contexts, it can be translated as "Power loss", but sometimes I have seen "Heat dissipation". Here at the company, it is usually packaged as a selling point such as "Low XXX", e.g. for servo drives and other electrical components (motors, modules, etc.).

I guess my question is, is there a time to use "Power loss" and a time to use "Heat dissipation"? What is the difference between them? If there is a W specification, is it safe to assume that it should then be translated as "Power loss"?

Thanks for any help, and I look forward to meeting the forum!

Thinking along the lines of something like an electric heater, heat dissipation becomes more relevant than power loss. As you say, for electronic products, power loss may relate more to the efficiency of a product, where you generally want the lowest figure possible.
One area where the two may relate is where the power loss results in heat dissipation, the resulting heat has to be removed to keep everything running safely,
cheers,
Richard

Thanks for the information, Richard! ;-)

I'm assuming that power loss ALWAYS results in heat dissipation (which may explain the ambiguity in terminology for Verlustleistung). I can see this being important, as you point out, in situations where keeping the temperature in check matters. Would this matter in a conventional control cabinet running a machine? Am still tending to think that they are more concerned about the actual wattage being lost, which brings up another question: What causes power loss anyway, e.g. in electric motors or drives?

Any time electricity flows through anything except a superconductor, power is lost and heat generated. This is caused by current flow through the resistance of the conductor and is equal to current squared times resistance.

Resistance is caused by finite mobility of the electrons in the conductor. The more mobile the electrons are, the lower the resistance and the lower the power loss (heat dissipation) at a given current flow.