Techno-economic Assessment of an Off-grid PV-powered Community Kitchen for Developing Regions

Nowadays, around 1.5 billion people have still no access to electricity, most of them living in rural areas in South and Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. The major residential energy consumption in these regions is for cooking. This energy demand is covered by firewood, agricultural residues and/or animal dung, implying often exhausting work for the collection and causing deforestation. Solar thermal cooking systems have been developed and promoted, although their success has been limited. This paper follows another solar cooking approach by evaluating the option of combining an off-grid PV system (PV generator + battery) with very low demand electrical cooking appliances. We have studied and optimized the PV-battery system to supply the load demand for the electrical cooking appliances for communities of 50 persons in the five countries with highest population without access to electricity: India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria. The levelized energy cost is around 3 c€ per meal or less. The life cycle emissions of the PV-battery system (manufacturing, transport and decommissioning) are around 7 gCO2 per meal.

DUFO-LOPEZ Rodolfo;  ZUBI Ghassan;  FRACASTORO Gian Vincenzo; 

2012-01-05

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

JRC64566

0306-2619,   

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261911006301,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC64566,   

10.1016/j.apenergy.2011.09.027,