Globally, 2.8 billion people still cook with biomass, resulting in health, environmental, and social challenges; electric cooking is a key option for a transition to modern energy cooking services. However, electric cooking is assumed to be too expensive, grids can be unreliable and the connection capacity of mini-grids and solar home systems is widely assumed to be insufficient. Developments in higher performance and lower cost batteries and solar photovoltaics can help, but they raise questions of affordability and environmental impacts. The range of issues is wide, and existing studies do not capture them coherently. A new suite of models is outlined that represents the technical, economic, human, and environmental benefits and impacts of delivering electric cooking services, with a life-cycle perspective. This paper represents the first time this diverse range of approaches has been brought together. The paper illustrates their use through combined application to case studies for transitions of households from traditional fuels to electric cooking: for urban grid-connected households in Zambia; for mini-grid connected households in Tanzania; and for off-grid households in Kenya. The results show that electric cooking can be cost-effective, and they demonstrate overall reductions in human and ecological impacts but point out potential impact ‘hotspots’. The network analysis shows that electric cooking can be accommodated to a significant extent on existing grids, due partly to diversity effects in the nature and timing of cooking practices.

Expansion of photovoltaic (PV) generation is increasing the challenge for network operators to keep voltages within operational limits. Voltage rise occurs in low voltage (LV) networks when distributed generators export, particularly at times of low demand. However, there is little work quantifying the scale of voltage issues and subsequently potential solutions across large numbers of real networks. In this paper, a method is presented to analyse a large quantity of geographically and topographically varying distribution networks. The impact of PV on voltages in 9163 real LV distribution networks is then quantified. One potential mitigation measure is increased network demand to reduce voltages. In this work, location algorithms are used to identify where increased demand, through energy storage, has the greatest effect on overvoltage. The study explores the impact on overvoltage of two modes of storage installation reflecting differing routes to adoption: purchase of storage by homeowners and purchase by network operators. These scenarios are compared with traditional re-conductoring in the 9163 networks. It is shown that to avoid violation of absolute voltage limits, storage should be installed at strategically important locations. Storage in homes reduces overvoltage, offering clear benefits to the network operator, but very wide deployment is required to completely remove the need for reinforcement.

Mini-grids powered by photovoltaic generators or other renewable energy sources have the potential to bring electricity to the 17% of the world’s population, mainly in rural areas, that are currently un-served. However, designing and managing a mini-grid so that it is reliable and economically sustainable is difficult because of the high variability of demand that arises from the small population of consumers. We describe an integrated set of four tools to assist mini-grid operators to predict and manage demand. These comprise a decision support tool to predict peak and average demand from a consumer population, a demand disaggregation tool that allows the key statistical properties of connected electricity-consuming appliances to be identified, a battery condition modeling tool which allows the impact on battery life of a planned operating regime to be predicted and a demand control sub-system which limits the operating time of high demand appliances to intervals when they can be supported. Results from application of the tool set to mini-grids in Kenya and The Gambia are presented. We conclude that accessible, usable and low cost tools of this form can improve mini-grid sustainability.