In Nigeria and most of Africa, grid power is epileptic and most people depend on small 1.5 KVA generators that cannot power 2000-3000W AC 220v electric cooking stoves in the market. This leads millions of people to use expensive, and environmentally undesirable sources such as kerosene, coal, charcoal, firewood and gas for cooking.
To address this challenge, Babson designed and Nicost developed a range of DC stoves, including Simplecook, Easycook, Cookit and Tripplecook for use in Nigerian/African settings. The specially designed Simplecook stove, for instance, cooks with just 700w 48v of DC, making it very easy to cook with small 1.5KVA generators that millions of Nigerians use. The uniqueness of Simplecook is that it cooks with several advantages over existing cooking methods:
- 1). Easy cooking with small 1.5KVA electricity generators.
- 2). Cooking with an energy mix of mains, solar, wind and batteries.
- 3). When connected to wind or solar sources, cooking cost is zero.
- 4). No electric shocks because it is DC 24v.
- 5). No health/environmental hazards associated with fossil fuels.
- 6). Cook at N38.64 per hour, against the N165.60 that AC electric stoves consume.
As part of Nicost’s product development efforts, we conducted our market research for our stove products in Lagos. From our market research, 100% of respondents randomly selected from the middle class and low income earners say they need a cooking technology that can save them the costs associated with their current methods, such as fuel wood, Kerosene stove, LPG stoves and AC electric cooktops. Now that electricity tariffs have been hiked and the removal of petroleum subsidies have shot up the cost of petrol and kerosene in Nigeria, our innovative range of DC stoves have become more of a desirable necessity for middle and low-income earners generally. In essence, therefore, Simplecook is targeted, primarily, at the middle class and low income earners, as a direct cost-cutting replacement for their current cooking methods. The bottom-line is that Simplecook is an ecopreneurial technology which, as our slogan says, “saves health, ecology and pocket”. We are continually researching to achieve even greater efficiencies in our heating system.
