You read the title correctly. The water dispenser is expensive not only the cost of purchase but the cost of maintaining. It gives you cold water so you need to plug it in the socket for the cooler needs electricity to run. By the way, do not forget to pull the plug before you retire at night so you can at least save some electricity overnight. When our water dispenser failed to work, we didn't have it repaired. And we didn't buy a new one either. What we have are small drinking bottles that we fill with water and storing in the refrigerator. Yes, the refrigerator is always there, always working so why not utilize it to the fullest? Would you believe that our electric bill went down by about 5% when we disposed of that water dispenser?
My step father always insists on drinking water from a water dispenser. It's always surprised me really when otherwise he's so careful with not wasting electricity. I agree with you that it's just the same really to put it into the fridge to cool. It's always there cooling away so if you have space you can throw it in there. I've even kept larger bottles in the fridge and just poured it out when I wanted it.
I think it's somewhat worth it for the convenience but mostly only when you know it will get used a lot. I'd say this works best for very large families wherein you'd probably end up paying more having everyone cool or heat up their liquid individually, but for smaller households I think it's better to just use a regular non electric dispenser and a water kettle to heat up the water for when you need it because chances are you won't need hot water all the time anyway. I myself have gotten used to just drinking room temperature water so I don't even need it myself.
Using a hot/cold water dispenser will definitely add to your electricity consumption so I've never considered having one. We put water in glass pitchers and cool them in the ref. During summers, we fill up used bottles with water and place them either on the freezer or chiller. We have a dispenser in the office and to save on electricity, we switch the hot option off for most of the day as this consumes even more power than cooling the water. We only turn the hot switch on during lunch and snack breaks.
Why bother with that? As far as I can see, isn't it just doing what a refrigerator would normally do? I guess, if you're on the run and the water in there is still warm, it would be beneficial. Other than that, I see no reason to have a dispenser for drinking/cooking purposes.
We have an electric water dispenser long ago and was not really aware that it consumes a lot of electricity since I was still a kid back then. Now I have my own place and my own things, learning this, I don't feel the need to have such thing. I have my fridge so I guess I'm cool with that. I'm not even into cold water though so I guess it won't matter
