Kuyere Feb. 10, 2022 update

[RobertVB]

During the past two weeks we have been engaged in the following activities:

(1) Building 10-cell 24V, 10Ah LTO batteries for cooking applications
(2) Testing and refining a customized over-discharge protection circuit for the newly assembled LTO batteries
(3) Converting conventional cast iron cooking pots to solar electric cooking pots by adding positive temperature coefficient (PTC) heating elements to the bottom of the cast iron pots. A PTC heating element has an initially low low-temperature resistance with the resistance increasing with increasing temperature such that the current diminishes at high temperature providing natural automatic temperature regulation of the heating element.
(4) Delivering the battery-assisted solar electric cooking prototypes to a women’s solar cooperative to have them test out the cooking, and incentivizing them to cook up to 5 meals per day over the next 2 months.

Everything is progressing well.

Battery-assisted cooking with the solar electrified cast iron pot and DDS cooking with the eWant electric pressure cooker both seem to work well.

-RVB

[RobertVB]

A picture of the set-up: The battery-assisted cast iron cooker on the left, the eWant cooker on the middle, and a small ISEC on the right.

Current the battery on the right is not used, and the eWant cooker and the ISEC use DDS electricity.

The ISEC is used to heat water that is then used in the cast iron pot and the eWant cooker.

[RobertVB]

What the women’s cooperative cooks in one day with the above-pictured set-up. This consists of slightly less than a kg of fish, about 3.5 kg of Nsima (i.e. Ugali), about 2.5 kg of cooked rice, about half a kg of greens, and about 2kg of goat stew. In other words, a little over 9kg of total cooked food during the course of a sunny day.