The paper concerns the experimental analysis of the energy conversion process during uniaxial tension of 310S austenitic steel. The plastic work distributions were obtained taking into account the influence of strain rate and plastic anisotropy based on the displacement gradient determined experimentally using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) method. On the other hand, the energy dissipated as heat was obtained by the calculation of heat sources from the transient heat conduction equation basing on both the evolution of the temperature field determined by Infrared Thermography and mechanical field provided by DIC. It was shown that the proportions between the terms of the heat conduction equation and between the particular components of the energy dissipated as heat are significantly different for various process durations. As a measure of energy conversion the energy storage rate Z=desdwp was used. At the beginning of the plastic deformation, the Z values are in the range from 0.4 to 0.6 depending on the strain rate and then decrease monotonically up to the level of around 0.15 with the increasing strain. Moreover, just before the end of the process the Z values decrease significantly and become close to 0 or even negative, which means that the material loses its ability to store the energy.