[Stoves] Solar Cooking facilities for all rural households in India

Saravanan Arumugam asan at protonmail.com
Thu Jul 12 21:34:21 CDT 2018


//
We should follow the natural process in our scheme of things and get away from the "electric" mentality.
//

Well said.. Dr. Anil

Saravanan Arumugam
Director - Design Centre,
Agrindus Institute
Wardha, MH, IN
HP : +91 98408 80558

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

-------- Original Message --------
On Jul 13, 2018, 07:07, Anil Rajvanshi wrote:

> In this solar powered induction cookers has any thought been given to what happens on cloudy days? Generally 3-4 days cloudy days storage has to be factored in any stand alone PV systems. That increases the battery size and cost.
>
> And finally it does not make sense to produce electricity from the sun and then convert it to heat. Only 20% energy in the sun spectrum is able to produce photoelectric effect whereas 60% of solar energy has utilizable heat component.
>
> Nature utilizes the photoelectric effect to produce food and the heat is used for driving wind and evapotranspiration for cooling. We should follow the natural process in our scheme of things and get away from the "electric" mentality.
>
> Cheers.
>
> Anil
>
> Anil K Rajvanshi, Ph.D.
> Director and Hon. Secretary
> Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
> Tambmal, Phaltan-Lonand Road,
> P.O.Box 44, Phaltan - 415523
> Maharashtra, India
> Ph: +91-9168937964 (office)
> www.nariphaltan.org
>
> http://www.nariphaltan.org/writings.htm (AKR's articles and talks)
> http://www.huffingtonpost.in/dr-anil-k-rajvanshi/ (Huffington Post blogs)
> http://nariphaltan.org/nari-in-press/ (articles and news published about NARI)
> http://www.thebetterindia.com/author/anilrajvanshi/ (ocassional blogs in Better India)
> http://www.speakingtree.in/anil-rajvanshi (Speaking Tree blogs)
>
> alternate e-mail:
> nariphaltan at gmail.com
>
> On Thu, Jul 12, 2018 at 11:32 PM Nikhil Desai <pienergy2008 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Sujoy:
>>
>> Let's first recognize that Piyush Goyal is a smart minister in the Government of India. With portfolios of finance (temporary), railways and coal, not only is he the most powerful minister other than Modi, He has also held power, new and renewable energy, mines, at junior levels.
>>
>> He was the one to  up the solar PV target for India from 20 GW to 100 GW, most of it from grid-connected solar parks and farms.
>>
>> He is in a position to give away induction stoves to everybody at a 50% discount. Grid stoves at 220V cost around $30-40 on amazon.in, and about the same in retail shops in cities and towns. Their ex-factory costs are likely to be $20-30, which means the government can subsidize the manufacturers $10 apiece if they simply rolled out 100 million more stoves.
>>
>> True, that may not be all of rural India, nor used exclusively. People without grid connection or a home capable of holding rooftop PV, batteries, and  internal wiring would of course not behefit; we have enough of those in India, but this government is not for the "upliftment of the downtrodden", just "survival of the fittest".
>>
>> Of the 300 million households in India of 2025, I imagine 150 million can have LPG and grid induction cooking, and another 50-100 million by 2030 on one or the other.
>>
>> That still leaves a market for "better biomass stoves" at 50-100 million for advocates of BBM if they get past Kirk Smith's imaginary threshold of "truly health protective" and his insistence on "complete, permanent" transition away from solid fuels.
>>
>> Stacking is a virtue. A cook needs to achieve total economy - food, water, time, fuel cost, stove cost, other electrical appliances, and cash - that only she knows how.
>>
>> Nearly ten years ago I had declared "The lighting problem is solved," once I found China-made LED flashlights in Vanuatu. I also became an advocate of grid-PV, which was such a turnaround, I did not have to persuade fellow skeptics.
>>
>> Then in 2010 came a question from a senior friend who has been in this "cooking energy" work for decades. He asked me, "How long do you think before PV-induction cooking can be viable?" I said, "Come back in five years."
>>
>> Then right in 2014/5, some proposals started floating. My take then was, "Considering that anything takes at least three years from concept to realization, the time has now come to take this seriously."
>>
>> Why, I think already around 2014, Himachal Pradesh (a state in India) Chief Minister or his rival was offering free induction stoves if elected. I was only playing the same tune.
>>
>> Now about grid, off-grid, batteries, and all that jazz.
>>
>> First, note that Goyal says India has "100% power surplus" right now.
>>
>> He boasts, but this is the tragedy of Indian power development. The government has invested or incurred sovereign liability of about $1 trillion in propping up this sad situation where people don't have the finance to invest on their side of the meter. Why is India only so sparsely air-conditioned? Why can't air-conditioning and refrigeration be spread in 50% of the households and all throughout the food chain, since there is enough supply capacity? What is the point of putting up 100 GW of solar (including some solar thermal) if not to mothball all the nuclear plants and all the coal plants built before 1990?
>>
>> What "power surplus" means in this context is that a) most of the induction stoves will run on 220V grids, including in "rural" areas; b) "rooftop PV" - which is also a huge "scheme" under GOI - will also be grid-interactive; and c) strictly off-grid solar induction cooking, with 48 V supply and battery - has a negligible potential.
>>
>> What I see Michael Trevor, Crispin, and Andrew discussing here is for another world, not rural India as it is now and if its grid reliability problems can be solved soon. (One reason for "power surplus" is that the distribution entities are short of money and their state governments cannot subsidize them any more; it is another ball of wax altogether, a major headache - "In India Only, Sir!" variety.)
>>
>> Still, look at this way - suppose (i.e., assume, since I know better!) that about 30% of "cooking" (not boiling chai) in India is now done outside of homes, and the fraction keeps increasing at about 2-3 percentage points per year before plateauing out at about 50%.
>>
>> That means, the real commercially competitive market for cooking -- and indeed, to reduce the solid fuel pollution WHO cooks up from just numbers of household, without attention to how much fuel is used and how - is OUTSIDE homes.
>>
>> This is how the world has changed in the last 20 years -- greater urbanization, with many cities having doubled in size; greater grid electrification; higher cash incomes and financial inclusiveness. In this environment, the hippy-style romance of "cookstoves for rural poor households to save forests, protect the climate, improve health, and empower women" has to be rethought.
>>
>> Solar PV could cause a revolution to put most of us to permanent sleep.
>>
>> Nikhil
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Nikhil Desai
>> (US +1) 202 568 5831
>> Skype: nikhildesai888
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 10, 2018 at 9:30 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpigott at outlook.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Small contribution Andrew:
>>>
>>> 48 VDC is much better for control electronics, as you say, and all bicycles are 48 Volts, that I have looked at. It seems the electric vehicle industry is settling on that because it is regulated less stringently.
>>>
>>> I don't know how many of you have any electronics training but "when I was young" any Class C circuit was permitted without safety because it was incapable of blowing anything up, even itself. A short circuit caused nothing untoward.  Heaven knows what they call that now but the principle still applies.
>>>
>>> If 48 is safe to touch and the parts are 1/4 the size, why would anyone go for 12 volt anything? What voltage is produced under a nominal load from 20 Li-ion batteries?
>>>
>>> The CAU students and I looked at induction cookers to see what they delivered. First, they deliver less than the claimed efficiency, closer to 75% than the claimed A, B, C ratings (respectively 88, 90, 92%). Second the power rating is the consumption, not the cooking power.
>>>
>>> Cooking at high power would still draw at least 30 amps, 40 from a big unit (2 kW), from a 48 volt pack. Would it be better to store heat?
>>>
>>> Regards
>>> Crispin
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Stoves <stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org> On Behalf Of Andrew Heggie
>>> Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2018 12:18 PM
>>> To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves <stoves at lists.bioenergylists.org>
>>> Subject: Re: [Stoves] Solar Cooking facilities for all rural households in India
>>>
>>> On Tue, 10 Jul 2018 at 10:24, Michael N Trevor <mntrevor at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> WANT TO KNOW A WHOLE LOT MORE.
>>>> GOOGLED 12 v INDUCTION COOKTOPS
>>>> SOME VERY NICE EXPENSIVE STUFF.
>>>> BIGGEST THING LOTS OF FANCY ELECTRONICS THAT WILL NOT HOLD UP IN RURAL
>>>> WARM COASTAL MARINE CONDITIONS
>>>
>>> All the time the aggregated cost of the PV panels and battery storage are so high I cannot see solar to electric induction being viable.
>>> Currently  any battery storage I can buy is a couple of times more expensive than buying from the grid in UK so it doesn't pay me but it may pay me to heat water from excess PV electricity. Just as PV panels have halved in price as production capacity has increased it looks like LIon batteries are coming down by ~15%  as installed capacity doubles, whether there is enough lithium  mined to sustain this is another matter and there are other storage technologies.
>>>
>>> Michael what is the common failure mode of fancy electronics in your environment?
>>>
>>> The circuits for induction heaters seem remarkably simple, a couple of MOSFETS  in push pull oscillating at ~150kHz  and a simple control circuit (the one I bought following Nikhil's promulgation is too coarse on the control side) but I see no reason to store or distribute even DC electricity at such a low voltage, 48V seems more sensible and then the MOSFETS handle less current.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
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