INTRODUCING SOLAR COOKING

Around three billion people across the world, primarily in developing countries, use biomass cooking stoves in their homes to cook their food. The biomass used is often wood, which when burned creates potentially serious health risks and huge environmental implications. Dr Tasmiat Rahman, is leading a project in the heart of the Bangladeshi slums to introduce the use of solar powered cookers in a bid to improve conditions and reduce emissions.

Solar powered cookers could transform the lives and health of people living in tough conditions in developing countries.

Dr Tasmiat Rahman, Assistant Professor in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, is leading a project to make that happen.

He said: “This project brings together the science and practicality of implementing an E-cooker, or electric cooker, network in a slum environment, with the social and cultural implications of engaging with the slum community and instigating behaviour change. It is an important area of study because we know that cooking with wood can cause serious respiratory illness, particularly for women and children who are in the home environment a lot. We also know open flames in the home pose a huge safety risk for the families and that wood fires cause deforestation and the emission of dangerous greenhouse gases.”

Tasmiat secured funding from the Global Challenges Research Fund in March 2020, and his team’s first job was to find a suitable area in which to undertake the project.

Bangladesh is a country where 70 per cent of the population relies on solid fuel for household cooking and heating needs. It is also a country where Hazardous Air Pollutants (HAP) cause up to 100,000 deaths every year.

“We identified Bangladesh as a potentially suitable country for the project due to the high use of wood burning stoves and the associated health issues, but we also needed to ensure any potential site could handle the logistics of having an E-cooker network installed,” said Tasmiat. “My aim was to set up a hybrid system of solar power and on-grid energy for the chosen community, taking away the need for wood burning but also gas, which comes with its own safety issues, and avoiding batteries which cause toxic waste.”

Tasmiat’s proposed E-cooker network operates by using solar energy supplied by panels mounted above the consumers’ homes. On a regular day, these panels provide/generate enough energy to operate an E-cooker for the cooking process. Any excess electricity generated is fed into the national grid. In the absence of solar energy, such as at night or during winter, electricity is drawn from the grid to power the E-cooker.

“We wanted to ensure we worked with a community that felt comfortable being involved and would truly benefit from E-cookers, we were also keen to make sure that we were providing all the information they required from the start,” explained Tasmiat. “With that in mind, we partnered with SNV, a global not-for-profit development organisation which has a presence on the ground in the slums of Bangladesh.”

SNV facilitated the site selection process. A team from the organisation observed slums including Vatara, Mohammadpur, Tejgaon, Bhashantek and Mirpur. Bhashantek was identified as being suitable for the conditions needed for the project.

The Bhashantek slum in Dhaka was established due to rapid population growth in the area which led to housing shortages and poorer residents having to resort to slum living. This densely populated slum suffers significantly from air pollution and adverse health effects.

Project research identified that the slum had grid line power connection that was tapped informally by community level suppliers. This results in financial loss and unaccounted power usage for the local distribution board, thereby placing a lot of strain on the electricity generation, transmission, and the general safety of the network.

Ninety-five per cent of Bhashantek families have been living in the slum since 1974. It is home to around 2,200 households and has been directed by a management committee ever since the site was established. The slum has no gas line supply. It does have grid electricity supply but on an informal basis. Tasmiat’s team, along with SNV, noted the slum was particularly highly populated, had a distinct lack of access to clean cooking and 99 per cent of dwellings were houses of the tin shed type.

“Working with SNV, we went to Bangladesh and had a meeting with the Bhashantek slum management committee,” explained Tasmiat. “Our aim was to explain the project, its benefits to residents and the long-term goals of improved health and environmental sustainability.”

The meeting was a success and some important decisions were made in conjunction with the committee. It was stipulated that the project team had to share organisational and project information at all stages with the local police, local councillor office and the slum management committee. All community engagement should go via the management committee and slum residents would be encouraged to help in implementing the project. And the project team agreed to engage in conversation with the local electricity supplier and come to an agreement on grid electricity costs before the project could start.

Whilst the practical elements were being sorted out, including the installation of the solar panels to power the E-cooker network and the discussions with the electricity provider, SNV provided four data collectors to go into slum households and undertake a survey with residents to provide understanding on the social, cultural and emotional conditions within the homes.

Craig Hutton, Professor of Sustainability Science in Geography and Environmental Science, was involved in this element of the project, particularly the gender-related component of the homes involved in the project.

“The women in the family in this slum are the ones undertaking all the cooking and overseeing the wood burning stove in the home,” explained Craig. “There are also some strong cultural ties to the smoke produced by these stoves which we knew may be a barrier to change for some households. The survey of 100 respondents gave us the chance to ascertain the day-to-day practicalities for these women in the home and to gauge any possible obstacles to change, which we could then address.”

The survey results identified the most common fuel used for cooking was wood, but electricity and gas were also used. Families tended to cook twice a day, first between eight and ten in the morning, and again between four and six in the evening. Most respondents mentioned coughing, burning eyes and headaches from the smoke when cooking, and those using electricity mentioned electric shocks as a common occurrence.

The survey data helped create a spatial map of wood fuel usage, cooking behaviours, and affordability. Through this, the team could identify the potential power consumption of the target community and at what times, so they could design the right capacity solar system.

Following the survey, the team organised face-to-face workshops with 60 women who would be using an E-cooker in their homes.

The information and data gathered from these workshops showed that the majority of residents relied on wood as their primary or supplementary fuel source. They did, however, occasionally use gas or electric stoves. In the event of a gas shortage or electric blackouts, people frequently reverted to using a wood stove. In the case of large cooking for ceremonial purposes, people prefered to cook with wood.

They all wanted to adopt an alternative fuel source for a variety of reasons, including the fact that it is cleaner, less expensive, safer and provides them with more time for other household activites. The latter is key, as one of challenges with e-cooking is that cooking times may take longer. The majority of individuals wanted to switch to an E-cooker. However, the system’s cost-effectiveness and endurance were the most important qualities to them.

The workshop helped the E-cooker team create a causal loop diagram that linked positive and negative perceptions of different cooking fuels, and that is now the basis for the long term study. After the pilot of trialling solar power electric cooking, further workshops will be undertaken and changes to the causal loop diagram will be explored.

“The E-cooker network, powered by a central 30kW solar system, is now installed and running in Bhashantek,” said Tasmiat. “We have 60 homes with E-cookers and we are continuing to observe how the residents use them and engage with the change.

“Key at this stage of implementation is delivering a successful pilot network to help us gain knowledge about how these systems work on the ground so we can reproduce it elsewhere. We are constantly assessing willingness among residents to pay for access to the E-cooker network and we keep a close eye on the complex social and cultural issues which may act as barriers to uptake.”

Among the next steps for Tasmiat and the team is collecting smoke pollution data and power usage data via an Internet of Things network. Analysing this information will help improve the system’s efficiency, give insight into the impact of smoke on the respiratory health of the members and determine the influence of the E-cooker network in preventing these.

Finally, estimating the financial benefits and barriers to community members and informal leaders will enable the team to propose a well defined business model, which Tasmiat hopes will enable policy analysis with government authorities to implement the network more widely across the country.

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