[Stoves] Village scale electricity generation (Re: Ken)

[Ronal W. Larson]

Ken, Nikhil, and list

	1.  Re the first line below, Radha Muhthiah is NOT the CEO of the UN Foundation.   I specifically asked this as she gave a fine presentation (Saturday’s AM opener) to the ETHOS group, with more than half an hour answering questions.  I am afraid that Nikhil’s mostly denigrating remarks are likely to have had some negative impacts.  

	Breaking news - she left shortly after for India -  hopefully to finalize a likely next large stove meeting in New Delhi - probably late October 2017.

	2.  Similarly, she also disputed that SE4ALL is a part of the UN Foundation  (Nikhil’s second sentence.).  They are not even headquartered in the USA.  They have three staff persons (as do other groups) in the UN Foundation building in DC. I urge taking a look at the makeup of this group’s advisory board - it dwarfs GACC.  I think there is a chance they could become more interested in stoves as PV needs increasingly less help.

	3.  Nikhil reported not long ago that he had attended a talk by Ms Muhthiah (I believe at George Washington University) where he apparently misheard these facts. She, graciously, said on Saturday that she was sorry he had not introduced himself.

	4.  Re Nikhil’s statement “Providing 50w per household will only ensure poor people stay poor” ,  being on the board of a small NGO supplying solar lanterns in Namibia, I can attest that this statement  is nonsense.  Buyers, helped with a PAYGO system, can save money from day # 1.  This is for a $35-$50 dollar device that can also charge cell phones.  Billions of people don’t have enough cash to pay that nominal cost without PAYGO.

	5.  I support all of Ken’s statement below, and am sorry we did not get a chance to chat on this topic over the last few days.  But I did see him from a distance once.  PV can be a major help in supplying fans for stoves - especially large TLUDs.  Only watts are needed tom control kilowatts.

Ron


> On Jan 27, 2017, at 11:03 PM, Traveller <miata98 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Ken: 
> 
> I suggest you take  your questions to the CEO of GACC whose legal title is the Executive Director of UNF, Inc. The SE4All bandwagon of UNF is heavily into village-scale electricity generation. 
> 
> It doesn't have to be PV. It can be any local resource or diesel, LPG. I have found both solar and diesel in remote islands of Vanuatu and villages in South Asia or Africa. Money is the limiting factor. 
> 
> Providing 50w per household will only ensure poor people stay poor. One cannot hope to have transformative impact of electricity at such low levels except via IEECTs - Information, Entertainment, Education, and Communication Technology that is the smartphone or wi-fi connected tablet (assuming investment of ~$100 and communication/storage expenses of minimum ~$10 a month are affordable). 
> 
> I am not too sure what you mean by "counter-cultural". My late mother went from wood to charcoal to kerosene to LPG to electricity, including microwave, but stopped at induction. I even went to induction and cook most of the things she used to make except breads. Read Kirk Smith's presentations on Ecuador and to Paraguay, India. 
> 
> Getting rich enough to afford and then to subsidize is not a bad goal. 
> 
> Nikhil
> 
> 
> --------- 
> (India +91) 909 995 2080
>  
> 
> On Sat, Jan 28, 2017 at 1:14 AM, Ken Boak <ken.boak at gmail.com <mailto:ken.boak at gmail.com>> wrote:
> List,
> 
> As someone who has worked with biomass gasification and village scale electricity generation - I would be very interested to hear how exactly rural electrification to the point of providing perhaps 2kW per household, to replace biomass stoves is going to work?
> 
> We are currently at the point where we could provide about 50W per household - so it would take a revolution in cooking appliance technology to achieve this.  However I believe that "slow cookers" are about 70-200W, and could be run throughout the day from a suitable sized pv panel. 
> 
> If, possiblly combined with pressure cooking, something could be achieved. But these modern techniques of cooking are so counter-cultural, that they would struggle to gain traction.
> 
> I'm at ETHOS this weekend if anyone wants to chat.
> 
> 
> Ken
> 
> 
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