Energy savings from an Ecoglow brooder

After six rounds of chicks, our Ecoglow brooder is still plugging along, although it is showing signs of wear.  The power cord (or power brick?) is starting to flake out on us, but Mark wiggled the cord until it worked and then taped it in place, and the brooder seems to be willing to continue providing warmth for our chicks.

While I'd like the unit to last forever, I have to admit that it's probably already paid for itself even if we have to get a new power cord next year.  I figure we've used the brooder for about 4,000 hours so far, which provides an energy savings of about 532 kwh, or $65.  Since we paid $60 plus $16 shipping, as long as we can eke one more round of chicks out of the brooder (and I hope we can do several more), we will have come out even.

(I'm actually a little astonished, typing this, that the brooder saved so much electricity, so you might want to check my math.  People use various types of heat bulbs with chicks, but for a small backyard flock, 150 watts seems to be average.  The Ecoglow brooder uses 18 watts.  I could get away with taking the heat source out after three weeks, but I usually let our chicks keep it for four weeks.  So I figure 4 weeks X 7 days X 24 hours X 6 sets of chicks = 4032 hours of using the brooder so far.  At a savings of 132 watts, I've avoided using 532,224 watt-hours of electricity, or 532 kilowatt-hours.  My electric bill tells me we're currently spending about 12.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, so that comes to a savings of $65.)

Since Amazon has started selling Ecoglow Brooders (with free shipping), when we end up having to replace our unit, we'll be able to get it for $59.99.  Maybe I should go ahead and order one so that when ours flakes out, we'll have a spare ready to slide into use?