(Archive) Solar Powered Electric Cooker_Team 2020-33

Summary of our design

According to a report published by the World Health Organization in 2018, around 3 billion people across the world still cook with leaky stoves and use inefficient and polluting practices to prepare food. This helps to contribute to the death of 4 million people each year. In response, we designed a solar-powered electric cooker for rural communities, which can help address health and environmental problems associated with the use of traditional cooking methods.

Key design features for this project are as follows:

- A direct current (DC) heating element with a power requirement of 50W, and a heated temperature of 140°C.

- A generic digital thermostat temperature control switch sensor.

The thermostat used is an incredibly low-cost, yet highly functional, thermostat controller. With this module, you can intelligently control power to many kinds of electrical devices, based on the temperature registered the cooker’s highly accurate negative temperature coefficient temperature sensor.

Our experience designing and building the prototype

We designed, constructed, and evaluated the performance of a solar-powered electric cooker, which could help increase the uptake of clean cooking practices in the rural communities in Kenya. Participating in the Efficiency for Access Design Challenge helped us to engage and showcase our design with rural communities.

Our design works to address the following SDGs

- SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being): Help reduce the incidence of illness caused by indoor air pollution through the use of traditional, polluting three-stone stoves.

- SDG 5 (Gender Equality)

- SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) & 10 (Reduced Inequalities): Help reduce the 21 hours a week labour associated with collecting firewood, which is traditionally borne by women and girls and/or eliminate the costs of cooking fuel.

- SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy): Our project can help enhance access and knowledge of clean cooking technologies in rural communities.

- SDG 15 (life on land): Our project can help reduce over-reliance on forest resources as a source of cooking fuel and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions associated with the use of firewood. This can help reduce deforestation and pressure put on forest resources. There are no emissions associated with the use of the solar cooker, and it is therefore safer for the environment.