FAQ

---

SharedElectric  

FAQ  

 

FAQ  –  summary  of  discussion  

Why  don’t  you  promote  solar  stoves?   Solar  stoves  have  been  proven  to  be  less  acceptable  in  India,  even  after  subsidies   over  the  last  30  years.  A  very  interesting  survey  of  Indian  villagers  shows  that   even  though  90%  of  the  respondents  considered  the  technology  useful,  but  only   1%  were  willing  to  invest  in  it.     Isn’t  it  less  efficient  to  use  biogas  to  create  electricity  and  then  cook  from   that  electricity  compared  to  cooking  with  biogas  stoves?   It  turns  out  that  the  overall  efficiency  of  cooking  (gas-­‐to-­‐food)  is  more  or  less  the   same  whether  you  burn  it  directly  in  a  biogas  stove  or  turn  into  electricity  and   cook  using  electric  stoves.  (Both  end  up  around  40%)  This  is  mainly  due  to  bad   efficiency  of  gas  stoves.   Also,  gas  stoves  do  not  bring  the  added  benefit  of  having  electricity  supply.       Will  people  be  ready  to  wait?   We  are  aiming  at  maximum  wait  time  of  10-­‐15  minutes  (the  energy  supplier  can   decide.)  For  example,  you  want  to  cook  something,  press  button  and  you're  told   that  in  4-­‐10  minutes  you  get  your  electricity,  you  wash  your  hands,  start  cutting   the  vegetables  and  4-­‐10  minutes  are  gone.     Anyway,  How  long  does  it  take  to  start  a  fire?         Who  will  make  the  electricity  available?     We  are  not  going  to  sell  energy.    In  India  there  are  many  local  agents  providing   rural  electricity.  They  know  the  local  situation  better  than  we  do.     We  will  say  to  them  we  have  a  solution  where  they  can  electrify  more  houses  for   the  same  investment.       How  do  you  secure  that  the  electricity  is  green?   Currently  the  only  financially  feasible  technologies  to  electrify  rural  villages  are   Biogas-­‐generator  (with  manure  digester)  and  rice  husk  gasifier  (bio-­‐mass   gasification)     So  the  “dirty”  methods  are  not  going  to  be  used  since  they  are  to  expensive/not   suitable  in  these  cases  (see  our  document  on  CO2  calculation  for  selection  of   technologies)     How  are  you  going  to  reach  out  to  250.000  houses?     That  is  perhaps  optimistic.  We  will  however  be  targeting  local  entrepreneurs   each  of  which  has  50-­‐10.000  houses  in  his/her  portfolio.  Therefore  we  need  to   sell  our  device  to  250-­‐5000  people  to  reach  250.000  households.       Isn’t  it  carbon  neutral  to  burn  firewood?  –  It  is  in  Switzerland!   That  is  true  as  –  as  long  as  the  firewood  is  sustainably  harvested.  In  India  this  is   different.  The  firewood  is  not  sustainably  harvested  which  means  CO2  is  burned   and  released  faster  than  captured  by  the  trees  growing  instead  of  the  burned.   See:  Link  page  7.       What  other  impacts  to  you  see  of  your  solution?   We  would  expect  better  respiratory  health  as  well  as  developmental  and   financial  improvement  for  the  people  in  villages.