Robot economics explained
Robot vs Human: The Real Cost Comparison
A robot's purchase price is only one part of the equation. The financially relevant question is how much useful work it performs and how much paid labour can actually be avoided.
Human costs
Consider wages, pension, employer payroll costs, paid holidays and productive working time. A £15 wage does not necessarily mean £15 of employer cost per useful hour.
Robot costs
Consider purchase, integration, power, maintenance, subscriptions, uptime and supervision. A machine switched on for eight hours may perform much less than eight hours of equivalent human work.
The biggest uncertainty is not electricity consumption: it is task-specific productivity and whether automation genuinely changes staffing expenditure.