Electric cooking has the potential to improve quality of life for people who cook using biomass, both by improving health by eradicating harmful emissions and by removing the need to collect fuelwood, thus freeing up time for other activities. This paper reports on a study that introduced electric cooking as an alternative to biomass-based cooking in 10 households in Simli, a rural Western Nepali community, to assess its feasibility in rural offgrid contexts. Quantitative and qualitative data from a cooking diary study and electrical mini-grid data were collected, assessing the compatibility with micro-hydropower grids and Nepali cooking practices. Datasets of Nepali cooking practices and meal energy requirements were generated, revealing that generally two meals are cooked per day and that, on average, electric cooking consumes 0.25 kWh/day and 0.14 kWh/meal. Participants simplified their cooking practices and found chapati hard to cook on the induction hobs due to inexperience with the cookers. Conversely, dal and rice were found to be easy and fast to cook in pressure cookers on the hobs, leading to a switch from cooking chapati-vegetables based meals to dal-rice based meals. Fuel stacking was common, with participants reverting to their biomass stoves to cook chapati, and due to a lack of reliable electricity supply. Participants found that the transition to electric cooking provided more time for households, due to the reduction in length of time to cook a meal and less time required to collect firewood, and enjoyed cooking on the stoves due to elimination of indoor air pollution. The electrical data analysis showed that control issues, voltage instability, and limited microhydropower plant capacity provide obstacles for electric cooking, especially as it becomes more widely practiced. Nepali people typically cook at the same time as peak demand for electricity, exacerbating the problem of limited capacity in villages like Simli. Only three households continued to use their electric stoves regularly due to a lack of reliable electricity supply, showing that widespread adoption of electric cooking is currently unfeasible. The running costs of electric cooking were lower than the effective labour time costs of fuelwood collection, but initial capital expenses for the electric cooking system and monthly electricity costs are a further barrier to adoption in rural Nepal.

In rural Nepal, micro-hydropower plant mini-grids provide renewable electricity to thousands of communities but the plants often have poor financial sustainability. Widespread uptake of electric cooking in such communities is currently not feasible due to high peak loads and limited capacity. In this paper, we develop a Remote-Areas Multi-Energy Systems Load Profiles (RAMP)-based stochastic techno-economic model for evaluating the economic viability of off-grid communities and improving their financial sustainability by introducing new appliances, productive end uses, and demand-side management measures. The model can be used to understand community electricity demand, assess economic status, determine equitable and profitable tariff structures, and plan new connections including electric cooking promotion or new industrial machines. Detailed electric cooking load modelling functionality was developed to represent Nepali cooking practices, scalable to approximate widespread uptake of electric cooking, and adaptable to other cookers and contexts. The model showed that a payment structure based on electricity consumption rather than a flat tariff could increase the income of a case study community in Eastern Nepal by 400%, although increased monthly payments for certain households from NPR 110 (USD 0.93) to NPR 500–1100 (USD 4.22–9.29) could present difficulty. However, households could reduce their electricity consumption and a more equitable tariff structure could be chosen while preserving plant profitability. The number of industrial machines such as mills could be doubled and up to 40 households provided with electric cookers if demand-side management measures were introduced.

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Transitioning to clean cooking fuels is not only part of achieving SDG7, but also makes a significant contribution to mitigating climate change by reducing carbon emissions. The paper contradicts the conventional wisdom that electricity is too expensive to cook with. The paper explores the energy required to cook dishes using different technologies and fuels by analysing data from Cooking Diaries and Controlled Cooking tests conducted under the MECS programme. Electric pressure cookers (EPCs) use least energy when compared with electric hotplates, and a detailed description of how the EPC works explains why this should be. The paper draws out distinctions between African and Asian dishes, notably the impact of energy intensive dishes prepared mostly in Africa. Standard efficiency based approaches to comparing the performance of stoves are not appropriate to modern electric cooking devices so an alternative approach based on specific energy consumptions is proposed e.g. charcoal stoves use 15 times as much energy as EPCs to cook African dishes. Energy ratios provide a basis for estimating carbon emission reductions associated with transitioning to modern cooking fuels. Historical costs show that the cost of cooking with an EPC can be only 20% of the cost of cooking with charcoal, which highlights the potential for modern, energy efficient electric cooking devices to defy the conventional wisdom of the energy ladder.