We’ve just been looking at an advert for a Quooker in one of Elizabeth’s magazines. It’s a device which gives you instant boiling water on tap and is all the rage in the modern kitchen (so I am told). They are pretty expensive (about £700) so we won’t be installing one anytime soon.
Or maybe we should? After all one of the reasons for getting these devices is that it is very energy efficient. It costs 3p a day to run and that’s “a saving of up to 55% against a kettle”. That’s got to be good.
Hang on though.
If 3p a day is a saving of up to 55%, then presumably a kettle costs around 6p a day?
That would be a saving of 3p x 365 = £10.95 per year
So that means the tap pays back in slightly under 70 years.
Sounds like a good investment to me!
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In practice it’s probably even worse than that.
I saw the same kind of numerical naivete when my daughters’ school bought a wind generator. The initial cost (as I recall, £1600) would be repaid from the average electricity generated in about 200 years. Even that, however, completely ignores ongoing costs such as maintenance and repairs. I’m guessing that typical domestic technology will have a hard job lasting even 10 years without significant maintenance and repair costs.
How long is the manufacturer’s guarantee on this “Quooker” ?
Also, “up to 55%” includes rather lower numbers such as 1% and even zero! So the payback time could be infinite!