[Stoves] solar cooker response (changing thread name)

Wed Jun 14 15:59:58 CDT 2017

Dear Bernie

Many thanks for that clarification. I was remembering David’s numbers in Rands and trying to work backwards 15 years. From the point of view of successes, there were many:

The cookers were sized correctly to the pots, tasks and insolation. Thanks there due to Christian Kock, Hamburg for his dedication to the effort.
The cookers could be shipped very cost efficiently.
They could be assembled correctly, if a bit slowly, by local artisans.
They were reasonably stable and reliable.
The 2002 Solar Restaurant in Johannesburg (Rio + 10 event) was a big success and cooked on several of them.

What was not so successful was the uptake at the price by the public, looking at both the frequency of use, expected working life, and prospects of it becoming an ‘industry’ that did not require perpetual financial support.

Regards
Crispin

Bernie:

Thank you for the clarification. EUR 2.5 million is about what it takes to do a sizable, well-planned project between Germany and South Africa unless you had other GIZ presence in related energy activities.

It is of course encouraging that it was a success. I often say that failure of a well-planned project is a gold mine; nobody plans to fail, so discovering what went wrong is much more enlightening than finding out how planning was done just perfectly right (and luck helped, as in most cases).

Let's hope that Germany stays the course in funding new projects, rather than running away, leaving the field solely to GACC.

Nikhil

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

On Wed, Jun 14, 2017 at 3:51 PM, Bernhard Müller <bs_mueller at gmx.net<mailto:bs_mueller at gmx.net>> wrote:
Crispin, Nikhil,
the total costs of the gtz (now GIZ) solar cooker project in South Africa were EUR 2.5 million. I personally attended the final workshop and all participants explained it as a huge success story. According to my knowledge, gtz did not stop it because it was not successful, but because a large amount of money disappeared in South Africa. Presently it is difficult to approach GIZ regarding solar cookers because the new structure does not allow to place the lever at the right place(s). GIZ is far more intransparent than gtz was.
Bernie

Bernhard S. Müller, http://www.mueller-solartechnik.com Eschborn, Germany
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