We had a phone call with the EarthSpark International team this week, and they reported that most of the grid-powered “SparkStove” cooking systems are installed, and that two of the SUNSPOT™ systems are installed and running. Some of the grid customers are still awaiting training, which has been delayed because of CoVid concerns. Additional SUNSPOT installations have been put on hold for the same reason, but they anticipate making progress in the upcoming couple of weeks.
The local team reports that “everyone loves it so much that most likely the participants will decide to purchase the system after the project completion.” They said that the grid-tied participants have completely eliminated charcoal purchases but had to scramble to go find charcoal when there was a grid outage (caused by lack of diesel fuel across all of Haiti). Customers said, “it is just so simple.” We will be doing more detailed interviews, but this appears to answer the question of whether electric cooking will be “culturally accepted.”
During the outage, the SUNSPOT systems were the only places in the town that had electric lights, so there is another positive benefit.
Hello, This is very interesting. I was working in Nigeria recently which is prioritizing LPG for cooking (better than fuel wood) because Nigeria has lots of LPG. But the longer term solution has to be electric cooking. I was thinking more of the cheap Chinese 2 ring stoves which are very cheap — around $20 for the unit in Haiti. Takes about 2 kw when both rings are in use. Induction and pressure cookers are very efficient. But a family needs at least two large hotplates, or one hotplate and the pressure cooker. Ideally 2 pressure cookers and the hotplate. Is this feasible. ? Individual PV rooftop I think is less cost effective than local PV microgrids –the way EarthSpark is working in Haiti. The pilot needs to be a PV microgrid like Earthspark’s installations in Haiti financed by Pay as you go (EarthSpark has this), and the induction/pressure cookers plus of course lights and phone charging. Get back to me and let’s talk