eCook, about cooking with photovoltaics, and enhancing micro and national grids with a battery cooker combination.
As I said in a previous blog, with the publication of the report, I have had many emails asking if induction hobs are the way forward. I had yet another ‘induction’ email this morning from a colleague. Once again the suggestion was attached to the efficiency
savings of induction stoves.
So in this blog I would like to outline some of what we know about the major components and document where we might save energy and make system efficiency improvements.
You know how Facebook is always asking you to post a status about what you just bought, like ‘I just bought a digital radio from Amazon’ or ‘I just bought seventeen sausages from Sainsbury’ – well ‘I just bought a S20-P08F Battery Stack from Aquion‘.
Why is this even vaguely noteworthy?
One of the great frustrations to us, is that we haven’t been able to confirm whether Induction hobs will work with a pure sine wave inverter.
Induction hobs are more efficient than hot plates. In discussion we think this is mainly heat loss downwards on cheaper portable hot plates – it would be interesting to test an induction hob against a really expensive cooker with good thermal insulation below the heating ring (and a good fitting pan).
However, the point is that induction is recognised as more efficient, and cheap induction hob is a good 20% more efficient than cheap hot plate.
The proposition begins to gain traction among the donors. DFID wanted to check my numbers and so commissioned three evidence based reports. However at the time of writing, these reports are not yet on the web.
What is on the web is the synthesis paper. “SOLAR ELECTRIC COOKING IN AFRICA IN 2020. A SYNTHESIS OF THE POSSIBILITIES”. Admittedly this is by myself, but it is based on the three other peer reviewed papers, and my synthesis itself was peer reviewed.
Solar Electric Cooking 