Electric cooking for low income communities

Electric cooking has the potential to replace biomass cooking as a cleaner and safer alternative. In Nepal, 70% of the population cook with firewood, which produces harmful emissions. Many rural communities in Nepal have micro-hydropower mini-grids with a constrained power source. My research focusses on how to enable widespread adoption of electric cooking in such communities where the spare power for cooking is limited. The research examines the problem from social and technical perspectives. Cooking is deeply cultural and a successful transition to a new cooking technology requires changes in cooking habits. Therefore, the research includes work on electric cooking intervention studies in Nepal where participants are provided with electric cookers, enabling understanding of current Nepali cooking practices and analysis of the transition to electric cooking. On the technical side, everyone wants to cook at the same time, which is impossible on a 100 kW mini-grid with 1000 households connected and 1 kW electric cookers. Therefore, the research examines solutions such as the use of batteries to store spare power, demand-side management and designing a low cost, efficient electric cooker suited to Nepali cooking practices.