[Stoves] China and cookstoves [Was Re: A user-centered, iterative engineering approach for advanced biomass cookstove design and development]

Nikhil Desai pienergy2008 at gmail.com
Mon Dec 4 08:59:49 CST 2017


Ron:

We should talk. I don't mean to offend you and am afraid of making you
angry.

But this is precisely the kind of questions that I used to challenge in
many a questionnaires including rural energy surveys.

The cardinal principle is that if you really want to gauge consumer
preferences, try to understand their behaviors, living conditions in
totality, not by asking spotty questions whose answers are convenient for
you.

What you are suggesting is a "leading question". I would strike it off
immediately. If you had a questionnaire that gathered information on the
physical, social, economic contexts, I might suggest alternative ways of
getting an idea of what you want to know.

I have been around long enough to sneer at academic surveyors who basically
steal poor women's time, knowledge, soul to market their wares, write PhD
theses to test fancy hypotheses and propound the findings at conferences.

I have also talked to women surveyed and the survey takers. My sneer comes
not from me but them. Behind the backs of Western theorists of rich
theories, these people laugh and some tell me poor women are smart enough
to know ahead of time these surveys serve no purpose other than preparing
articles in peer-reviewed journals that none of their libraries can ever
get.

I have also been told - by survey designers - that poorly formulated
questions elicit unreliable answers. Some poor women don't know whose cakes
are sought to be cooked by stove promoters.

Of course none of my answers got to what you asked.

I am glad none of the surveys have asked your question.

Markets evolve organically, which is why "development projects" in retail
products and services have disillusioned me.

No wonder more money has been spent on publishing papers than on design and
testing of contextually relevant stoves.

That said, let's design a broader survey with some way of getting to know
if cooks want to collect enough extra wood to make biochar. My view -
uninformed by questionnaires, of course - is that household cookstoves are
not the way to get biochar for soil conditioning. It should be a
large-scale industrial project. Already, billions of poor have seen it is
better to get rich enough to afford gas and electricity than to wait for
the Western stove community to develop the killer app of savior stoves. The
only way to get their trust is to earn it from hard work, not by
titillating them with "extra money". "Saving wood" was also the same as
getting "extra money"; they have been fooled enough by that promise.


N

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831
*Skype: nikhildesai888*


On Mon, Dec 4, 2017 at 12:36 AM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net>
wrote:

> Nikhil:
>
> I hope you (and almost everybody on this list) will take the time to ask a
> few low-income women the below-question that I have not seen asked.
>
>  If you could imagine yourself having a batch stove that cost the same and
> used the same fuel whether you (now low income) would rather make money or
> not, what would your own answer be?
>
> None of your answer below gets at what I am asking.  I repeat;  I have not
> seen any survey with this question.  I have talked to many people about
> this for twenty-plus years individually - and I have gotten the answer that
> I want others to get.
>
> Obviously I am asking this so as to get char in the ground.  Obviously for
> climate reasons.  But soil NPP improvement also occurs - without conflict.
> All this is obvious on the sister biochar list.  I am trying to get this
> list aware of biochar as a positive part of stoves and cooking.  It is of
> no help to hear your answers about fuel collection, making observations,
> cooks making money with kerosene stoves,  non-wood stoves taking over,
> large-scale cooking , etc.  None of your answers get at the question of the
> value in making char while one cooks.  It is not a difficult question to
> answer.
>
>
> Ron
>
>
> On Dec 3, 2017, at 8:48 PM, Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ron:
>
> That is an interesting question but the answer has to be compared to
> alternative means of making money.
>
> Reduction in fuel collection time is one form of saving; the time freed up
> can be used for higher-priority activity, including education, child care,
> or employment.
>
> In other words, answers to this question can only be interpreted with
> additional, context-specific information or questions. In and of itself, it
> is a meaningless question.
>
> There are indirect ways of gathering people's priorities -- observing what
> they in fact do.
>
> Here is what I have observed over the last several decades:
>
> 1. In India, housewives in cities and towns have indeed made money by
> cooking, though on kerosene and LPG/electricity and preparing
> dry/canned/frozen foods as well as fresh meals and snacks for sale.
>
> 2. Roughly a billion people in the developing world have moved away from
> collecting woodfuels and cooking all the meals for family consumption.
>
> 3. Family size and composition, location, alternatives and priorities in
> use of women's time have changed.
>
> 4. Charcoaling from own or others' trees is an income-generating activity,
> but whether a cook wants to spend her time to do the same is open to
> question. She might well want to do for selling locally as fuel but not to
> some central authority for biochar.
>
> Your question may be better directed to commercial, large-scale cooks, who
> are probably easier customers for biomass and coal stoves anyway compared
> to poor households.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Nikhil Desai
> (US +1) 202 568 5831 <(202)%20568-5831>
> *Skype: nikhildesai888*
>
>
> On Sun, Dec 3, 2017 at 3:39 PM, Ronal W. Larson <rongretlarson at comcast.net
> > wrote:
>
>> Paul:
>>
>> I have yet to see on ANY stove questionnaire:  “How important is making
>> (more than saving) money when you cook?”
>>
>> Ron
>>
>>
>> On Dec 3, 2017, at 8:41 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Crispin,
>>
>> Good point.
>>
>> I wonder how ofter "pride of ownership" is included in the evaluations.
>>
>>
>> I hope that such a quesiton can be asked to the 40,000 (or a sample)
>> users of the Champion TLUD stove in West Bengal.
>>
>> About surveys and questionnaires and interviews, (whether for stoves or
>> other topics), questions keep being changed, so comparison between results
>> are often difficult or meaningless because of wording.   Are there some
>> common (shared) questions that tend to be used in stove surveys?
>>
>> Paul
>>
>> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
>> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
>> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <(309)%20452-7072>
>> Website:  www.drtlud.com
>>
>> On 12/3/2017 5:35 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott wrote:
>>
>> In the survey of potential stove users conducted in Gauteng 2004, "Pride
>> of ownership" scored above price and fuel consumption in a ranking of
>> features.
>>
>> Philip confirms this aspect of reality in the South African market.
>>
>> Regards
>> Crispin
>>
>>
>> “Capital cost of the stove is a minor issue; the question is whether the
>> users like and use the stove.” A community I studied carefully had a
>> monthly household income of <$100 yet strove to buy a smokey cast iron
>> coal-fired stove costing ~$400.  It met all their needs – including a
>> higher social status merely because they possessed such a stove.
>>
>>
>> Prof Philip Lloyd
>> Energy Institute, CPUT
>> PO Box 1906
>> Bellville 7535
>> Tel 021 959 4323
>> Cell 083 441 5247
>> PA Nadia 021 959 4330
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
>> <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org>] *On Behalf Of *Nikhil Desai
>> *Sent:* Saturday, December 2, 2017 1:50 AM
>> *To:* Paul Anderson
>> *Cc:* Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
>> *Subject:* Re: [Stoves] China and cookstoves [Was Re: A user-centered,
>> iterative engineering approach for advanced biomass cookstove design and
>> development]
>>
>>
>>
>> Paul:
>>
>> Capital cost of the stove is a minor issue; the question is whether the
>> users like and use the stove. This is why contextual definitions matter,
>> because pellet production costs can vary greatly depending on the
>> feedstock.
>>
>> A high capital cost stove can be given one-time subsidy - should be given
>> to the distributor if one exists; could be given to a bulk producer - on
>> the condition that the stoves are found useful and used. Metrics of
>> efficiency and hourly emission rates are just smoke.
>>
>> I am glad to read "it is something about family, a cultural thing,
>> especially in country side." Gives the lie to physics-only theories of
>> supposed "stove science".
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 10:05 AM, Paul Anderson <psanders at ilstu.edu>
>> wrote:
>> Cheng and all,   (and a mention of Todd Albi).     see below.
>>
>> Doc  /  Dr TLUD  /  Prof. Paul S. Anderson, PhD
>>
>> Email:  psanders at ilstu.edu
>>
>> Skype:   paultlud    Phone: +1-309-452-7072 <%28309%29%20452-7072>
>>
>> Website:  www.drtlud.com <https://nam04.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.drtlud.com&data=02%7C01%7Ccrispinpigott%40outlook.com%7C62b2f8c8c9bf4c43283c08d53a40c4b8%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C636478972205853695&sdata=PbkCfNM6hUmnmoyj1uEbhKXufYiC9MFTSc3ueAqhjNU%3D&reserved=0>
>>
>> On 11/29/2017 10:15 PM, lh cheng wrote:
>>
>> Another Chinese little project. Surely, it is cookstove, not heater. Too
>> expensive, 1500RMB (230 USD), in rural area, a big number, very big, no one
>> buy, not even one, in rural area. For user, many uncertainties to use new
>> type of stove. if free of charge, a trustworthy friend who is an expert
>> about this stove, that might be fine.
>>
>> I was wondering about the price of that pellet burner stove.  Yes, it is
>> expensive, but expensive is a relative term.   It could be imported into
>> America where $230 is inexpensive, but the price here would be so much
>> higher and it would then be expensive here.
>>
>>
>> stove thing should be open-source ( just like Dr Anderson's Champion
>> Stove ), DIY, or made by acquaintance, it is something about family, a
>> cultural thing, especially in country side. In city, electricity or LPG is
>> enough.
>> Is there any prospect in China for DIY.   And what would be the
>> acceptance of a stove made with thin metal?   Generalizing, it seems that
>> heavy construction of stoves is the standard in China.   Todd Albi might be
>> able to shed some light on this.
>>
>>
>> a good approach for stove design maybe is that, basic knowledge of stove
>> design spread among people, and people help each other.
>> What do you have in mind?    in the context of China?   I have difficulty
>> imagining stove design work in China outside of the factory context.
>>
>>
>> concerning "stove intervention", during 1959-1961 in China, more than 30
>> millions of people died because a stove intervention movement. and people
>> have memories.
>> Please provide more information about this statement about 30 million
>> deaths.
>>
>> Welcome to the world of the Stoves Listserv.   We appreciate your
>> insights.
>>
>> Paul
>>
>>
>> best regards
>>
>>
>>
>>
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