Crispin and list: I have again added “stoves” back in. Your following is valuable in the discourse presumed for the ETHOS meeting.
Re #1: I still think it would be relatively easy to run the tests with a maximum percentage allocation of time specified by the manufacturer (and reported). At the present time, I discount any test that doesn’t tell me something about time involvement. Another approach is to just have the tester report the percent time away from the stove. Re #2: We are talking here about a “Consumer Report” issue. Until something better is reported, the stove report could include anything about lifetime warranties (or left blank if none exists. I hear about stove lifetime of a few months. A valid stove test should include something - even an estimate of lifetime. Re #3: I still think stove testers could add something on expenses - even if for only one hypothetical set of fuel and char prices (but a simple Nomagram chart or two could do the job. If you don’t know an annual costing, a test report user is flying in the dark. Re the CBD - thanks. I will try to get to it. I can sort of understand rules to protect forests, but plugging LPG seems weird. Better to turn the non-renewable biomass renewable. Ron On Jan 23, 2014, at 3:43 PM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <crispinpig...@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear Ron > > Very good questions, and the Social Science people were really on top of > those things. You would be impressed with the list of issues they raised. > > 1. Time spent tending the fire. Maybe report test results for emissions > and efficiency with different allowed times for tending? Of course trying to > bracket what happens in the real world. My observations on the present test > procedures is that they are unrealistic by encouraging no departure from > adjusting the fuel. How do your test procedures (now or projected) handle > this issue? > > Because the stove tests conducted in the lab are done quite ‘attentively’ we > are not in a position to measure our own performance – that’s unfair. However > things like the attention requirement (and fuel preparation time which you > didn’t mention) are evaluated during focus groups. This is not a chase for a > number, it is an assessment of whether the cooks, when using the new stoves, > are bothered (or not) by how the stove runs. This means that an increase in > attention time might be more than offset by some highly desirable feature. > Instead of trying to put numbers on everything, we just ask them what they > think about the stove and what it is like to cook on. They can rate things > from 1-5 and Cecil produced a spider chart of features which was in fact very > useful for visually determining what people though, overall, about a stove. > > So the short answer is that Acceptance-related questions are addressed in > focus groups. > > 2. Some measure of expected stove lifetime. (maybe both years and > cycles) > > This is notoriously difficult. One way that works (so far) and was tried > successfully in Mongolia is the producer is told that the stove must last > x-years and they have to guarantee them, replacing broken parts for free. > Then we are not tasked with testing durability at all. It becomes instead > something guaranteed by the manufacturer or distributor. > > 3. Annual cost of cooking with a particular stove. This to include > lifetime, efficiency, and the sale of char. Maybe a way to include also > health impacts? > > We are not in a position to determine this, though projects are. In other > words, it is not a matter for the test lab which just measures things. We > would be able to provide all the numbers upon which such a calculation is > based. Because local circumstances have very different economics there is > really no point in the lab doing it. Simon Bell, the small industries > coordinator, would take that up with the market aggregators who are creating > the distributions chains. > > Please see also my message to Candela as it contains discussion about char > and offset calculations that are relevant to your interests. > > Regards > Crispin
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