[Stoves] PV-battery fans (Re: A J Heggie 3 August)

[Traveller]

Nikhil Desai again, in response to Heggie:

1. Of course a fan-powered stove can be worth somebody's while. An exhaust
fan is worthwhile for ventilation. Both these have been in use for decades
in electrified areas, albeit for larger users. But it is such "commercial
cooking" that, I am willing to wager, has taken off the entire increment of
food/feed/beverage cooking demand in the developing world (collectively) in
the last sixty years.

Why, a couple of years ago, I found a strange contraption on the side of a
store here in my city in India. It looked like a stove but huge, and was
lying as junk. When I asked, the storekeeper said it was a diesel stove
from the 1940s. I have never seen a diesel stove before or after. He said
something about kerosene rationing and how electric fans made it possible
to use these diesel stoves in the back room kitchen for snacks.

In many geographies (urban and peri-urban), outsourcing the cooking and
using electric fans - even if not as exhaust, if there are enough windows -
are the first coping mechanisms. Not that you would catch that from blind
followers of published statistics.

I am not an engineer, but let me put this out for discussion - combustion
temperatures and air flows are the most important elements in  solid fuel
cooking, followed by fuel and vessel characteristics.

2. "How do you decide on those figures from this discussion?" (In response
to my "do you think woodstoves with PV-battery fans may be able to
capture >1% of the cooking energy market in a developing country 10 years?")

Well, why not? What would it take to map out the economic geography of
cooking and claim, "Ah, for those areas that can't be supplied with liquid
or gaseous fuels, and where PV penetration potential for small battery
electricity is high, what would a 200 Wp solar system be able to do, and
what is the total potential market in 10 years?

The food markets are increasingly inter-connected, nationally and globally.
So are the markets for electric kettles, rice cookers, toasters.

WE the Missionaries of Dung, Straw, Husk, and Twigs from the Church of
Renewable Biomass can complain, "Oh, that's for the rich;  we have taken
vows of chastity (no fossil fuels) and poverty (no electricity)." The poor
in the mean time, get rich and start sinning.

Just today the Wall Street Journal has an amazing story - The Rice Cooker
Has Become a Test of China’s Ability to Fix Its Economy
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/as-exports-decline-china-looks-inward-for-growth-selling-made-in-china-goods-to-the-middle-class-1470238429>
. Back 30 years ago, I had computed rice cooker penetration rates in Japan
and Korea, then derived projections of electricity demand for urban China
by 2000 using, among other things, rice cookers. (As also clothes washers,
irons.)

With a million dollar grant, I will calculate gains in life years (DALYs)
from 1980 to 2010 due to electric rice cookers.  Modern coal power is a
wonderful boon.

I didn't allow for heating milk; had no idea China will become such a huge
producer and importer of milk. The market for kitchen appliances,
<http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/indonesia-kitchen-appliances-market-to-grow-at-cagr-16-till-2021-techsci-research-report-588142792.html>
processed foods, and restaurant meals, has left all the "improved
woodstoves" at the mercy of stubborn poor.  What are GACCers yakking on and
on for?

Our sin is, we keep on talking "stoves", not "foods", "peoples", "tastes."
Woodstove programs for the rural poor households have burned the meals.
They keep poor people poor. (Charcoal, coal and processed wood are
exceptions).

For a change, we might start talking about service standards, objectives,
market definitions, and serving the poor instead of saving them. That would
require thinking of the whole food and cooking "system" as Dr. Kishore said
in the Up in Smoke news item.

There is probably a niche market for PV-battery woodstoves and also for
PV-induction cooking.

The question is not "price/demand curve as electricity gets cheaper", but
rather as electricity gets RELATIVELY cheaper, all user costs considered.

I am going out and venture another guess -- at 7 USc/kWh (tax-inclusive
average tariff in India) grid electricity, baking bread and making rice
with electricity is cheaper than with low-quality wood at 14 USc/kg or 30
USc/kg charcoal (again, average urban price in India). That is on fuel cost
basis and without credit for convenience and cleanliness that some users
are likely to prefer.

I don't think electricity price "would have to fall a lot before cooking
with electricity becomes economic". I have been saying for 20+ years that
for certain parts of urban Africa, electricity is cheaper than LPG and
charcoal is not an option. So go electric, solar (water heating), gas
(large cities), or eat out.

That would still leave about 500 million households in the world reliant on
solid fuels.  What options have the biomass stovers given them yet? (Xavier
Brandao had the right question.)

Nikhil




---------
(India +91) 909 995 2080

On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 2:58 AM, <ajheggie at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Default] On Tue, 2 Aug 2016 16:16:50 +0530,Traveller
> <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >Well, do you think woodstoves with PV-battery fans may be able to capture
> >1% of the cooking energy market in a developing country 10 years? That's
> >huge, and more than any improved woodstove has in the last 50 years.
>
> How do you decide on those figures from this discussion?
>
> My inference from recent discussions here  was that a small PV
> solar-battery combination was more likely to be cost effective than a
> TEG IF it was decided that a fan powered stove was "worthwhile".
> >
> >For one, the SE4All campaign is about "universal access" to electricity
> >(and "clean cooking", whatever that means). And even then, it is becoming
> >clear that there is a pico-PV battery market for phone, laptop, fan, for
> >mobile applications or a host of other appliances. Adding another battery
> >may improve the utilization rates for PV system investments, which then
> >lower the cost of outages on the grid if there is a grid connection. (I am
> >betting that at any given time, a fourth of the grid-connected households
> >in developing countries have a grid failure. No use pumping diesel power
> in
> >the grid or generate diesel power if small uses can be taken care of by
> >batteries.)
>
> I come from a country with a well established and reliable grid so I
> can only but imagine what I might value of the utility of a small
> amount of electricity. I suggest that powering a smart phone and
> lighting would be high on that agenda but it would be interesting to
> see the price/demand curve as electricity gets cheaper, I think it
> would have to fall a lot before cooking with electricity becomes
> economic. My cooking is almost exclusively done with electricity but
> that cost is a very low percentage of my income.
>
> AJH
>
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