Cooking with Solar Electricity

atmosfair with the its local partners Ensol Ltd. and Watu na Umeme Ltd. has started a new project in Tanzania for solar electric cooking for schools and others institutions.

First School

We are currently installing the first solar system at a school in Sanya Juu, Kilimanjaro Region, northern Tanzania. The system will produce enough electricity to cover the school’s current electricity consumption plus the additional demand from switching to electric cooking. The electric cooking set consists, among others, of rice cookers, induction stoves and heat retention baskets for simmering. This enables the school to completely replace the firewood currently used for cooking.

Electric Cooking Workshop

During the recent electric cooking workshop, the school’s cooking staff got the opportunity to test out 23l rice cookers with the foods regularly cooked at the school: Ugali (maize porridge), Pilau (rice dish), Makande (maize beans dish) and Mchicha (spinache). The cooks were excited to see how well the dishes could be prepared by the rice cookers. They were able to prepare Makande in 4 hours which they previously had kept simmering the whole day on the firewood stoves. The double wall of the rice cooker provides heat insulation. Therefore, most of cooking time the rice cooker can be operated in warm/simmering mode reducing the power consumption significantly.

Scale Up

After successful implementation of the pilot systems we are planning a scale-up to at least 100. You can find more information on the project site.