Nexleaf Analytics

“Are electric cooking appliances viable clean cooking solutions for mini-grids?” To help answer this question, the Access to Energy Institute (A2EI) set up a pilot project in six different mini-grid locations around Lake Victoria in Tanzania and gave 100 households an electric pressure cooker (EPC) to use in their homes. Each EPC was connected to a smart meter to collect data on how the EPCs were used. The paper presents findings from a study designed around the A2EI pilot project that aims to provide an understanding of cooking practices, the adoption of electric cooking over time, and to assess the potential for electric cooking to substitute traditional cooking fuels. Through collaboration with the Modern Energy Cooking Services (MECS) program, Nexleaf Analytics, and PowerGen, the pilot has generated data on electrical energy consumption from 92 households in six remote areas as well as a comprehensive range of other datasets gathered from 28 households in two of the locations. This paper presents a preliminary analysis of this data. It starts with an analysis of cooking practices in these communities—dishes cooked, utensils used for cooking, and choice of fuels. It goes on to examine fuel stacking behavior, and finally, it examines how people have integrated EPCs into their cooking practices before the highlighting key impacts associated with using EPCs. The answer to the original research question will be useful for different stakeholders such as utility companies, mini-grid operators, electric cooking appliance manufacturers, the clean cooking sector, and international organizations.

Small bug-fix release: Fix a regression in the <code>plot()</code> method when visualizing with a JenksCaspallSampled or FisherJenksSampled scheme (#1486). Fix spurious warning in <code>GeoDataFrame.to_postgis</code> (#1497). Fix the un-pickling with <code>pd.read_pickle</code> of files written with older GeoPandas versions (#1511). Thanks to Ian Rose, Joris Van den Bossche and Martin Fleischmann for their contributions!

Small bug-fix release fixing a few regressions: Fix <code>astype</code> when converting to string with Multi geometries (#1145) or when converting a dataframe without geometries (#1144). Fix <code>GeoSeries.fillna</code> to accept <code>np.nan</code> again (#1149).

Data from 4,038 households in India show wireless sensors could make clean energy solutions affordable for those at the bottom of the energy pyramid. Three billion of the world’s poorest people mostly rely on solid biomass for cooking, with major consequences to health1 and environment2. We demonstrate the untapped potential of wireless sensors connected to the ‘internet of things’ to make clean energy solutions affordable for those at the bottom of the energy pyramid. This breakthrough approach is demonstrated by a 17-month field study with 4,038 households in India. Major findings include: self-reported data on cooking duration have little correlation with actual usage data from sensors; sensor data revealed that the distribution of high and low users varied over time, and the actual mitigation of climate pollution was only 25% of the projected mitigation; climate credits were shown to significantly incentivize the use of cleaner technologies.

Azorella compacta (llareta; Apiaceae), a large woody cushion plant, is a remarkable species forming dense cushions and characterizing the high elevation rocky slopes of the central Andean Altiplano. Field studies of an elevational gradient of A. compacta within Lauca National Park in northern Chile found a reverse J-shape distribution of size classes of individuals with abundant small plants at all elevations. A new elevational limit for A. compacta was found at 5250 m. A series of cushions marked 14 years earlier showed either slight shrinkage or small degrees of growth up to 2.2 cm yr-1. Despite their irregularity in growth, cushions of A. compacta show a strong orientation, centered on a north-facing aspect and angle of about 20o from horizontal. This exposure to maximize solar irradiance closely matches previous observations of a population favoring north-facing slopes at a similar angle. Populations of A. compacta appear to be stable, or even expanding, with young plants abundant and recolonization of disturbed habitats.