A fixed position electric heater produces heat through the passage of current to the heating element that is made of a Nichrome resistance heating wire Ni80Cr20. The Nichrome heating element can be covered in a metal sheath shielded with a magnesium oxide powder or can be kept in open coil geometry.Generally, the heating element is kept in frame and is accommodated by a temperature sensitive thermal limiter to identify the overheating of the heating element. An alarm alerts the user about the activation of limiter. Some heater designs have a fan around the elements to increase the convection rate of heater.

A heater consists of a hard wire to either 110 or 220 VAC, on the base of designs but it may be a cord connected heater that is installed to a fixed position. The major kinds of fixed position electric heaters are: natural convection, forced air convection and radiation.

Natural Convection Heaters: The natural convection heaters focus on heating of a large space to warm the surrounding air and enable it to rise through convection from heater to the room. The baseboard heaters are featured natural convection heaters. They do not have fan and have comparatively low temperatures around the heating material and convection fans. The heating element has Nichrome resistance heating wire Ni80Cr20 around the metal tube packed with electrically insulated and thermally conductive magnesium oxide powder. Few baseboard heaters utilize a fluid rather than powder and are known as hydronic heaters.

Forced air convection heaters : Forced air convection heaters include a fan to distribute air around the heating element. The heating element is very small and much hotter than the natural convection heating element of equivalent wattage because of the large heat transfer rate of moving air. As a result, forced air convective heaters have more compact size than the baseboard heaters. The forced air heaters generally have louvered slots at the air input and exhaust areas to direct the air into and from the heater. This heating element is a Nichrome 80 wire having higher electric resistance than copper conductors.This resistance causes the heating of the complete length of wire.  The wire is an uninsulated and live material.

Radiant Heaters: Radiant Heaters release infrared rays that impose directly on the material to be warmed rather than producing warm air. The heating element is generally not adequate to glow visibly. It is essential to produce a temperature difference between the heating element and surrounding sufficiently to influence an adequate heat transfer through radiation instead convection. Because, line of sight geometry is necessary for heat transfer, radiant heaters possess a grid or mesh in front of the heating element than louvers that decreases the heat radiation. Further, because the radiation pattern from the heater becomes dispersive, radiant heaters are installed in the small areas like bathroom or in a place where the user stays near the device and he can experience the radiation.