Design of a low cost smart meter for capturing usage data for battery-operated cooking devices

Around 2.6 billion people still cook using polluting open fires or stoves fueled by biomass, resulting in roughly 4 million deaths annually due to indoor air pollution, significant carbon emissions, deforestation and gender inequality. Battery-operated cooking devices (eCookers) offer a clean, affordable, and reliable alternative to biomass cooking. However, in-field studies have yet to quantify the charging and discharging behavior of eCooker batteries, and how the the introduction of novel cooking practices that involve charging a battery to cook will impact consumer adoption. This paper details the design of a low-cost and open source eCooker smart meter, which combines the remote capture of battery status data with qualitative consumer behavioral data using a smartphone. This streamlined data collection technique was shown to provide significantly expedited data collection and automated data analysis required for accurate power system modelling to inform the potential upscale of eCookers in developing countries, and in particular Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) where clean cooking access rates are the lowest.