[Stoves] solar cooker response (changing thread name)

[Nikhil Desai]

Crispin:

I am not assuming anything, just asking to question the sanity of GIZ
experts. Maybe they'll pass, and might even pass me on the same or
different test.

If "For them, if they had a chance anywhere that was the ideal place, and
it was not viable. ", there is a prima facie case for insanity. I love GIZ
experts; I am sure they will gladly plead the insanity defense.

My rebuttable presumption is only that if they had talked to the customers
- um, "beneficiaries" - and put five in the field, the problems with wind
and storage would have been identified pretty quickly. Rural northwest
South Africa as "the ideal place" doesn't pass smell or laugh test.

Other errors -- in their zeal to help the poorest while also saving wood
(stored CO2), they go to a remote rural area where there aluminum was so
valuable there was an active market for scrap.

After spending 7 m Euros, GIZ should spend 70,000 Euros to start a
discussion on how NOT to do things. A "multi-year attempt to find out" if
there is a long-term reason to just give up on a solution because of gross
expert errors and ignorance.

"Findings of the study"?? You know how many seconds it would take plain
common sense to demolish such "studies".

Our key handicap is that studies are done not by students but by pundits
who already presume to know everything.

Or cook up numbers on the fly.

I too have done that, of course. My newest estimate - the 4 billion people
who have been cooking with solid fuels in the last 30 years (a billion of
them died during the period) increased their annual household cash incomes
by an average of $500 a year (current $, 2016 over 1986, roughly 1.2% per
capita per year, allowing for  decline in household size). That is an
increment of $1.5 trillion a year. Over the years, their investment in
homes and durable household goods probably grew by $1 trillion (current $;
this is an estimate of current value of the stock, not current flow rate).
How much of this $1 trillion go to "improved wood stoves"? Probably 0.1 % -
counting Ethiopian Mirte?

Nikhil



------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nikhil Desai
(US +1) 202 568 5831 <(202)%20568-5831>
*Skype: nikhildesai888*


On Tue, Jun 13, 2017 at 9:01 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:

> Nikhil
>
> Let's not assume anything.‎ These were the findings of the study which was
> a multi-year attempt to find out if there was any long term reason to get
> involved in the promotion of solar cookers.
>
> The conclusion was, no. ‎And they swore them off. For them, if they had a
> chance anywhere that was the ideal place, and it was not viable.
>
> Very sane.
> Crispin
>
>
>
> Crispin;
>
> You have listed enough reasons to dispute the sanity of GIZ experts.
>
> Nikhil
>
>
>
>
> On Jun 13, 2017, at 11:35 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
> crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>
> Solar concentrating cooker:
>
>
>
> One of the main problems encountered with solar cookers (K14, K16 and so
> on) in the last big GIZ effort in North-West Province of South Africa was,
> in spite of the rural location, theft of the stoves for sale to scrap
> merchants. Aluminum is valuable.
>
>
>
> Another common problem is wind tipping them over.
>
> A third is wind-blown dust getting into the food.
>
> A fourth is theft of the food.
>
> A fifth is storage of the unit.
>
>
>
> People have little space in their homes and storage of a valuable cooker
> outdoors is not practical.
>
>
>
> GIZ spent about 7m Euros on that project and declared no further interest
> in solar cookers.
>
>
>
> Crispin
>
>
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