Testing in Potou was formative because it highlighted key considerations to keep in mind during CCTs. In a place with intricate cooking practices, standardizing CCTs is of utmost importance. Thieb Jen is a dish of several steps. We ended up standardizing this process and asking all CCT participants to follow what became a cooking protocol of sorts. For example, some families covered steaming items with a cloth, and others with a plastic bag. But because most households steamed with cloth, we asked all participants to use cloth. We also standardized the amount of water used for steaming Couscous and steaming could only commence after the water had started boiling vigorously.

After one month of running controlled cooking tests (CCTs) in 30 households throughout the MV cluster of Potou, Senegal, the results are in. The locally manufactured Djaambar had an average specific fuel consumption (SFC) for both couscous and the local dish of rice with fish (thieb jen) on par with that of the imported StoveTec and Enviroft stoves.. However, the women who tested the Djaambar, Stovetec and Envirofits felt that Djaambars were:

1. too expensive,

2. not sold in the cluster, and

3. gave off too much smoke during cooking.

One never knows exactly what to expect from site to site. In Nigeria, there weren’t any locally manufactured stoves available in the clusters, so our decision came down to choosing between two imported stoves. Senegal is a different scenario. There is a local stove market that could be adversely affected by the introduction of an imported stove. Furthermore, with an SFC on par with that of the imported stoves, there is even less justification for introducing an outside player. However, smoke and kitchen health are a major concern. It seems our options are:

1. Focus on business development to figure out ways to reduce the costs that make the stove expensive.

2. Strengthen the local supply chain as part of the focus on business development. This way, people who have wanted to buy the stove are able to find it in their local market.

3. Encourage the manufacturers to improve their design in any way they can to reduce the smoke given off by the stove.

We completed 12 paired cooking tests and were hoping to begin seeing some kind of trend. This isn’t too much to ask because after 12 tests in other sites, we had an idea of the kind of behavior to expect from the data we were collecting. Senegal has been a different beast entirely. You could break down what we’ve done at other sites down to two basic tests: 1) boiling starch in water – corn flour, guinea corn flour, yams, cassava etc 2) boiling a protein – beans. In Senegal there’s frying, then boiling in the oil that was just fried with during which you’re busy steaming over the boiling that comprises the frying you’d done.

Things that are helping make sense of the data include:

1. Take pictures of every pot during the test. This will come in handy later if you need to know what kind of wood was used, the condition of the fire and how much tending was or wasn’t provided.

2. Standardize cooking practices as much as possible. With steaming and frying and boiling in fried oil etc, it’s necessary to make sure that everyone is doing the same thing. Most importantly, when making Couscous, we noticed that some people waited for the water to boil before they began steaming while others placed their Couscous on cold water and then boiled the water. Also, most people cover their Couscous with cloth, one house covered with plastic. Things like this could affect data in unusual ways.

3. Do more tests. While the first 12 tests have provided some interesting data, we are learning that cooking practices may affect stove performance. With subsequent tests, we’ll pay more attention to this intriguing development.

By Lee Forest Konstanty, Millennium Promise Lantern Consultant

On one side of the globe there is a manufacturer producing energy efficient solar lanterns. On the other side of the globe there is someone who could greatly benefit from owning one. The trick is finding a way to connect the two in a sustainable fashion. In March 2010, I set out to do just that; help to bring efficient lighting to Millennium Village Communities in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and Mali. I really had no idea when I began just how complicated developing a sustainable supply chain could be, and the reality is that I still learn something new every day. Through a series of posts I would like to take you through the work that I, in conjunction with the local Millennium Village Project Site teams, have been doing to achieve our goal of a sustainable supply chain for solar lantern technologies. This post will focus on working with community vendors, one of my favorite parts of the job.

Lantern Introduction:

Travel to any market in or around an MVP site and there you will find hundreds of different flashlights and lanterns. They come in every shape and size and nearly every imaginable color. Some of the most interesting lanterns available have colorful pictures, plastic flowers in their casings, and, to my surprise, flashlights that blink different colors while they play you a song. The market is filled with distinct lighting options; their only commonality being their incredibly low quality.

My first task when arriving in a community is to take different brands of solar lanterns that have been quality-tested in the Earth Institute labs in New York, introduce them to the communities, and describe to communities all of the ways in which the solar lanterns differ from the low quality imports available in the markets. It would be nearly impossible to go door-to-door showing the lanterns to every household, so we needed to find a creative approach. We found that the best way to get the word into remote parts of the MVP clusters is to approach people already in the business of selling flashlights at their community shops or through community associations that focus on clean energy.

The first time I arrived in an MV site, I walked to Vivian’s shop in the Bonsaaso cluster lanterns in-hand. Vivian has a small shop in a highly trafficked location and sells household goods, including lanterns and flashlights. My plan was to show her the lanterns, and ask her if she would be interested in keeping them in her shop for week for people to stop and see. My MVP colleagues and I were graciously invited to take a seat and show her what we had brought. No sooner did we have the solar lanterns out of the boxes, than a crowd began to form. Nearly 20 villagers spilled out of Vivian’s shop and while we showed the growing crowd the lanterns we had brought with us, the questions began.

“How long does it stay lit?”

“How much do they cost?”

“Where are they made?”

After everyone had had a chance to see the lanterns, we asked Vivian if she would be willing to keep four different lantern models, and allow people who visited her shop to see them and to decide which one they liked the best and might consider purchasing. She was happy to oblige.

Since my first day at Vivian’s shop, I have taken lanterns to vendors and associations throughout sites in Ghana and Nigeria, and the reaction is nearly always the same: gracious shop owners, crowds of people, questions about quality and price and excitement.

Lantern Displays:

After a vendor or association member has agreed to display a lantern, our program supplies a set of lanterns for them to use and display as they see fit. Some people light their storefronts, others walk the streets displaying the lantern to neighbors and friends, and most actually use the lanterns in their stores and homes in the evening. The most important thing is that people are using them as they see fit; After all, everyone needs lighting for different reasons. After roughly a week, we go back into the communities to collect the lanterns and ask the vendors and community members for their impressions. The results are often striking, and in cases people describe things that we had never even considered. In one village, community members did not like the way the manufacturing of the solar lantern had left a slight seam in the plastic. Others said they really preferred the lanterns that weighed more. In one case, community members charged the lanterns and pit them against each other to see which one would stay lit the longest.

I am always interested to hear about people’s impressions; these are factors that simply cannot be tested for in a lab. Furthermore, after a week of making lanterns available to community members, there is often a greater trust of the product itself, having seen it in action, and noticing that there was no need to purchase batteries or kerosene for lighting that week.

Technical Trainings and Project Design:

As is often the case, those vendors who displayed lanterns, are interested in selling them, and we like to prepare them the best that we can to answer many of the same questions that we are often asked. As such, a forum is chosen, and anyone who would like to attend is invited to take part in a solar technical training course. We cover the basics of how the solar panel works, the best ways to charge the lanterns, the different functions of the lanterns that the community would like to see made available and troubleshooting techniques.
At the end of the training seminars, we like to give the vendors the opportunity to discuss how they envision the lantern program progressing. We try to cover what types of support they will need to sell lanterns and what the most feasible way is for them to restock their lantern supplies. We attempt to incorporate all of the feedback into the overall program in order not to deviate from systems that are already in place and to utilize the experiences and input of those whom I always refer to as “the experts”.
The only question left after the training is “when are the lanterns arriving?”

The answer to which I will cover in the next post on working with distributors and manufactures.

Overview of MVP Stove Program

In MVP experience across several sites we have seen that there is a strong demand for efficient cooking products across rural Africa. The rural populations understand the value of fuelwood savings and are willing to pay for their purchase – to a certain extent of affordability. However, access to these products and services in remote regions remains a big challenge.

The motivation behind introducing biomass cookstoves to the Millennium Villages was to identify appropriate technologies that not only provide a highly efficient combustion (thereby reducing the stress on the environment) but also to do it in a manner that does not deviate a lot from traditional cooking preferences.  Following initial testing in the lab at Columbia University, several selected brands of cookstoves underwent detailed field testing using a process called the controlled cooking test (CCT) protocol. The process of introducing new technologies to the community in the MVP was based on ensuring that accurate quantitative efficiencies (usually between 35%-40% fuelwood savings have been reported) could be established for each cookstove under field conditions, using locally sourced fuelwood and food items, and ensuring buy-in from the community.

MVP staff then trained 10-15 cookstove vendors (frequently shopkeepers, youth groups or women’s groups) to learn the technical basics of the cookstoves, best practices in using them, the pricing for each model as well as to be present to answer any further questions from the community regarding the cookstove program. After training, vendors are ready to begin sales in the community.

Long term sustainability of the program will depend upon the successful incorporation of commercial partners who can extend the program and replace the current assistance provided by the project site teams and take the program beyond the borders of the Millennium Villages to other parts of the country. Furthermore, this partnership would be necessary for capturing the carbon revenue potential of the cookstoves that can be used to subsidize the cookstoves and increase affordability for the masses.

Key Lessons Learned:

Stove Program Implementation

in the

Millennium Development Villages

Not all stoves are made equally. Although locally made stovesareavailable in many countries, most do not have the uniformity or fuel saving capacity of alternatives that are manufactured industrially.  Because locally made stoves are often made by hand, there is a large variability in their construction, durability and efficiency.  Additionally, although local stoves may have benefits over a 3-stone fire, often these are smaller than claimed and do not compare to other stoves on the market that have been manufactured industrially.

Importance of testing under local conditions. When testing a stove’s fuel efficiency it is important to test stoves under local conditions. Because local foods, local cooking practices and wood varieties vary across countries, and often even within countries, fuel savings recorded through CCTs can vary from country to country. MVP has found that generally stoves are ranked according to efficiency in the same order across countries, but the fuel efficiency against the three-stone fire can vary as much as 15%.  Additionally, in these circumstances stove testing becomes an event where villagers can witness the fuel savings of the improved stoves and this helps promote the product in the community.

Allow women to test the stoves for several weeks.

MVP hasfound that allowing households to keep and use the stoves over the course of two weeks helps build confidence in the new product and allows women to see how it can positively impact their lives.  MVP employs a model where stoves are loaned to women for two weeks and at the end of two weeks they have the option to buy.

Create a demand-driven price model. MVP villagers across project countries have disparate abilities to pay for an improved cookstove.  It is important to gauge a community’s willingness to pay for a stove and price the stoves accordingly. The MVP model prices the cookstove between $10 – $16 and subsidizes the remaining stove cost.  In the future, MVP expects that the currently subsidized portion of the stove will be covered by carbon financing through the voluntary market.

Seasons matter. MVP site teams have discovered that seasons impact villagers’ demand for stoves at certain times of the year. Site teams note that communities often express greater desires for stoves during the rainy seasons when dry fuel wood is harder to gather and firewood to purchase is more expensive on the local markets.

Availability of free or inexpensive fire wood impacts demand.

A site’s local biodiversity can have an impact on the popularity and adoption of improved stoves.  Because one of the benefits of the improved cookstove is the reduction of fuelwood needed for any particular cooking event, villagers who freely acquire abundant firewood close to their homes often find the stoves less attractive.  Deforested areas, areas with scarce fuel wood, or conflict affected areas where collecting wood can be dangerous may find more village demand than those with reliable, sustainable fuelwood sources.

Strengthen community business skills through support and training. While some of the selected stove vendors may be shop owners, others may be ambulant vendors.  In both cases it proves prudent to provide training in stove use and function as well as basic accounting and record keeping skills. In the MVP project, it is important to know who purchased the stoves in order to be able to later go back and survey these clients. Later, it may become valuable to identify stove-purchasers for carbon monitoring purposes and many of these record keeping skills must be taught.

Choose reliable vendors. In a program where vendors are loaned stoves as working capital, there is always a risk of non-repayment by the vendors.  This can be partially avoided by measures such as having community members and family members vouch for, or essentially “guarantee” the vendor, or by asking vendors to put a down-payment on the cookstoves, to be returned upon repayment of the initial capital.  In MVP experience, choosing reliable vendors and having a strong incentives system in place to ensure repayment can lower the instances of non-repayment of the project’s capital investment. Furthermore, involving local community heads at the onset of the program often affords the option of going to them in the event of a defaulter. These community have proven to be allies in ensuring the success of the program.

Provide continuing technical assistance. Partially because the stove program is a subsidized initiative, technical assistance must be provided to the stove cooperative through the first several cycles of selling, ordering and purchasing. In MVP experience, burgeoning cooperatives often do not have the capacity or motivation to place orders at the beginning without site team support. After these first few cycles of ordering and selling, site teams assume that a strong enough connection will be established between the sub-distributor and the local cooperatives and vendors thus limiting the support required from the project in the future.

Create in-country partnerships.  Improved stove technologies, growing SMS capacity, emphasis on carbon emissions reduction and the focus on stoves as a way to improve women and girl’s health, have all contributed to a boom in the number of stove programs operating in Africa.  Creating relationships with other in-country organizations organized around similar objectives can serve both for knowledge sharing and, in some cases, actually allow for bulk transport of products, thus lowering shipping prices.

Size matters:

The primary feedback MVP has received from users is that the stoves are often too small for the pot sizes used in the villages. MVP field staff suggests that this has an effect on the rate of adoption of improved cookstoves in villages. Most families cook for over ten people at each meal and they often ask for stoves that are large enough to accommodate their needs. Survey responses show that most families will continue using three-stone fires for boiling water, cooking large meals, and other activities that require a large pot.

Investigate local capacity to manufacture stoves: Artisans at some sites have begun fashioning replicas of the rocket stoves introduced by MVP. This could work for or against the progress already being made at these sites. On one hand, making the stoves locally would significantly reduce costs and ensure long-term sustainability of the practice of using improved cookstoves. On the other hand, if stoves cannot be manufactured to consistent specifications, their efficiencies cannot be vouched for, which could work against the possibility of future carbon financing in these communities. Partnering with a stove manufacturer, for example StoveTec, to give proper training on best practices for designing and manufacturing stoves could ensure that if stoves will be copied, they continue providing similar benefits already in progress.

Watch a 5:23-minute video essay of what we’re up to in the Millennium Village of Potou, Senegal. This video describes how to field-test improved firewood cookstoves. It also includes an interview with one of the women who tested the stoves.

Just got back from the field and I’ve got photos for you to look at. I haven’t given you very much context so please go ahead and ask questions about them.

The main thing I wanted to get across, however, is that there’s a stove factory in Wahal Diam, a village here in the Potou MVP cluster in Senegal. These women make the ceramic inserts that go into the metal casing for the stoves. I wouldn’t characterize this is a stove in the rocket design. But it got me thinking that Stovetec should consider setting up a manufacturing base in Senegal.

Workmanship is really good here and in Dakar. There’s already an industry that’s involved in making stoves. Granted it’s very cottage and would need some upgrading, but these women who make the ceramic inserts are hard workers and are eager to expand. So eager in fact that they burned bridges with a village blacksmith who was taking too long to make the metal casing and have found a blacksmith in Dakar to forge the metal for them.

Given the proper dimensions and composition, I think it’s very possible we could have Stovetecs manufactured in Senegal.

ABSTRACT

To achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDG’s), all households in sub-Saharan Africa will
need to have access to basic infrastructure services. The challenge in meeting this goal is in
bringing this access while simultaneously driving down the costs. With an understanding of cost
drivers and the implications of achieving scale it becomes possible to plan a pathway to
successful infrastructure services access expansion. The analysis presented in this paper
addresses the issue of local and national electricity distribution planning in Senegal using a
model that identifies cost drivers of targeted electrification, providing useful policy guidance to
both national and local planners. A sensitivity analysis was conducted to capture connection
cost and coverage (access) variations as a function of demand, fuel, and policy uncertainties.
The local (an area of 400 sq km in northern Senegal) and national case studies of Senegal yields
the following key results. For both case studies, a high percentage (20-50%) of the currently
non-electrified population live in areas where grid expansion is more cost favorable than the
decentralized energy supply technologies. Expansion outcomes (costs and access) are very
sensitive to demand levels and capital cost of Medium Voltage lines and transformers.

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- National Electricity Planning in Senegal