[Stoves] Biomass Fired Appliance Characteristics, Features, Qualities, Attributes and or Considerations

[Tom Miles]

Ranyee,

Thank you for your comments. Members of the stoves community are still
trying to figure out ways that their cooperators can benefit from your
services.  Durability, funding, and Latin America are three focus areas that
attendees of the meeting in Cambodia expressed as lacking or difficult to
access.  

Tom

T R Miles Technical Consultants, Inc.
tmiles at trmiles.com
www.trmiles.com
www.stoves.bioenergylists.org







-----Original Message-----
From: Ranyee Chiang [mailto:rchiang at cleancookstoves.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2013 5:29 AM
To: stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org; 'tmiles at trmiles.com'
Subject: [Stoves] Biomass Fired Appliance Characteristics, Features,
Qualities, Attributes and or Considerations

Tom and all,

In a recent EPA/Winrock webinar and at the Clean Cooking Forum, there were
presentations describing ongoing work to evaluate durability.  Plans were
also shared for a collaborative effort to further develop protocols and
indicators that can be used by the sector.  (Monitoring stove lifetime is
also important, but it is challenging to use as an indicator because of the
time and resources and contextual factors, in homes or in the lab.  Existing
methodology to evaluate durability and lifetimes will be reviewed and
integrated into the current work.)  As the international standards process
continues, the plan is to have the durability methods and indicators ready
to add to the standards framework, addressing one of the gaps identified in
the IWA resolutions.  All this work is ongoing and we will continue to
provide updates about this progress.  The Alliance is supporting work in
this area because issues of durability and stove lifetimes are a high
priority and our efforts are focused on providing tools to evaluate and
communicate about this issue.

The grant review process (external, peer, merit review) and criteria are
provided in each request for proposals or applications.  The criteria for
review represent the particular goals for that RFP or RFA, with each RFP or
RFA representing one piece of the overall strategy.  If criteria is not
mentioned, it doesn't not mean it is disregarded, particularly because the
expert and independent peer review committees understand the challenges of
helping the rural and urban poor with household energy.  And with the
progress we are making with evaluating durability, we will have a clearer
vocabulary and more data to discuss this issue.

Ranyee


Message: 1
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 2013 09:32:49 -0700
From: "Tom Miles" <tmiles at trmiles.com>
To: "'Discussion of biomass cooking stoves'"
      <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: Re: [Stoves] Biomass Fired Appliance Characteristics,
      Features,   Qualities, Attributes and or Considerations
Message-ID: <000001ce33ad$8b9687a0$a2c396e0$@trmiles.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
 
> 5. Durability and ruggedness, longevity, will it last? will it burn 
> out? or will it break, what is the lifespan.
 
 
>From what I have heard in recent years at ETHOS, on the lists, and from
reports of the recent GACC meeting it seems like GACC is willing to
sacrifice durability for performance in order to meet carbon and numbers
goals. While some cultures may use a 1 year stove, others, especially in
Latin America, value a robust, durable stove.
 
 
If you were to do a meta-analysis - study of studies - of systematic,
multi-year monitoring of stoves including as many of the (now 41) criteria
on Lanny's list as you can find, where would durability land in importance
to the consumer? How would the individual stoves rank in durability? How
would those results vary across the globe?
 
Most of us got our start by trying to help the rural poor. Urbanization has
increased exponentially just since we began these discussions 17 years ago.
Are current strategies in stove development suited to the needs of urban
households? Are we keeping pace with the demographics? Is durability
important to urban households?
 
Finally, if GACC was created to serve us, how can we use it to meet our
needs? Where can we find Lanny's criteria in the framework of GACC? Which of
the GACC development tools including grants, workshops, and information
tools include these criteria? Where does the money go? What means does GACC
have to help those who are attempting to improve, and have demonstrated
promising performance, in each of Lanny's categories? How do grant
recipients score on stove performance in these categories? Correct me if I
am wrong but it seems like the organizations that are in the best position
to get GACC funding are those that are at the apex of stove politics rather
than performance. We need to figure out how to make the organization benefit
those who need it most.  
 
Tom