Tuesday, August 20, 2013

National Workshop on Standards and Testing of Cookstoves took off at Hotel Himalaya on 25 July 2013


A draft report on the outcomes of the "National Workshop on Standards and Testing of Cookstoves in Nepal"
9 August 2013

Tone setting the technical session
Regional Cookstoves Testing and Knowledge Centre (RTKC) Nepal under Centre for Rural Technology, Nepal (CRT/N) organized a one-day workshop on 25th July 2013 entitled “National Workshop on Standards and Testing of Cookstoves in Nepal” in collaboration with Alternative Energy PromotionCentre (AEPC), in association with Renewable Energy Testing Station (RETS), Kathmandu University, Department of Mechanical Engineering (KU), Centre for Energy and Environment-Nepal (CEE-N), Practical Action Nepal/Indoor Air Pollution and Health Forum (IAPH) and Centre for Energy Studies, Institute of Engineering (CES, IOE).

The workshop was organised to share on stove testing practices including stove testing protocols, methodologies and operation of measuring devices existing in various cookstoves testing centres in Nepal to perform efficiency and indoor air emissions measurements and discuss on the policy issues on stove testing protocols and standards including collaboration/coordination aspects among the existing stoves testing and related organisations.

The event was divided into two major consecutive sessions

Participants listening to the discussions 
Technical Session (Morning Session): to discuss on collaboration/coordination aspects among different stoves and related organizations and also touch base on standards and protocol they have been following. All together six centres including RTKC Nepal presented on their centre goals and their activities in the morning session. This was followed by interactive discussion sub-session where the views and questions were shared among the participants based on the presentations and followed by Brainstorming Session: discussion on a point question on collaborative approach among various stakeholders.

The major issues raised and common responses were:

1.      Why would someone test stoves?
-          for product development, value addition/marketing, branding
-          to claim subsidy
-          for publication of test result to receive grant for thesis writing
-          cost benefit analysis, comparing our intervention
-          to find the appropriate stove for a particular area/ user acceptance
2.      Protocol need for fuel other than fire-hoods
-          Common testing protocols will help compare the results and make easy for the choice of stoves for dissemination
3.      Pros and cons of different stoves testing parameters: CCT, KPT and WBT
-          Depends on time and budget, availability of trained professionals, and purpose of carrying out the test. WBT is preferred in the laboratory while CCT is preferred in the field.
4.      Nepal’s compliance with IWA tier referencing
-          Depends on need. Should aim for the best say ‘Tier 4’ for all parameters but depends on requirements for example the stove promoted for space heating in the mountainous regions cannot be assumed disqualified for safety reason.
-          Tier System is only for programmes own use and priority of aspects can be assigned.
5.      Bring on board all type of stove testing clients to ensure their stoves being tasted
-          Government or other related bodies must have provision for financial support like the stove subsidy to private manufacturers and other concerned.
6.      Collaboration among testing centers
-          NBSM to play a chief role in quality assurance
-          Any other testing centers can obtain accreditation from NBSM to be a certified testing agency
-          Mechanism of  monitoring and evaluation of the accredited labs should be developed and materialized by government authority like NBSM, AEPC
-          Conflict of Interest is one major issue and the developer itself cannot be a biased free certifying agency for own stoves

Dignitaries on the dice 
Policy Session (Afternoon Session): to discuss on the policy issues of standardization of stoves testing protocols, test results and stoves among different stove related public/private organisations and government bodies. Remarks by delegates and presentations and discussions were the attractions of the session.
Session began with the cooking status in Nepal through GoN’s ambitious programme of distributing clean cookstoves to 3M households by 2017. AEPC’s initiative on stove quality assurance on ICS Testing and Dissemination was concerned with ways of selection of new models of cookstoves to disseminate and the procedures of quality assurance of stoves through testing. AEPC’s KPT and CCT results were also summarized.

Presentation on Bio-energy Research Activities at NAST for Evidence Based Policy Formulation was more based on the technical session’s guidelines that highlighted on objectives and activities of Bioenergy Lab and possible avenues on bioenergy sector.

This was followed by presentation from NBSM focusing on the process of Nepal Standard development. The process of obtaining accreditation was briefed with calling on testing centres to enrol in the list.
The presentations were followed by discussion. Some of the major issues and concerns were:

1.      Mandates for developing any standards and compliance testing at NBSM
-          If any product which is as per National Standard (NS) and if the government think that is mandatory, can commence issue order and comply. There are 12 such products including cement. If the products have no NS mark then they can’t be sold in Nepal.
-          The existing labs recognised by NBSM will be considered for standards
2.      What is the point of having stove standards?
-          For Nepal Standard ‘NS’ Mark
3.      Subsidy for Institutional stoves
-          Setting up a benchmark for institutional stoves is necessary and qualified design should get subsidy

Scientific and Global perspectives on stoves testing standards, a presentation by Associate Professor Ms Tami Bond briefed on the history of stoves testing and highlighted on the programme effectiveness of the global stoves programmes stating that in an effective program the full performance of the technology is achieved, poorly performing technology should be displaced and a large fraction of users adopt better technology. Accordingly, possible reasons for loss of effectiveness is due to not accepting the technology by users, don’t use the technology and users don’t adopt the technology (cost, other motivation). On her presentation she also clarified on the IWA details.

It is very difficult to set up standards as every place is different in terms of stoves, fuels, foods, cooking habits, and uses despite the fact that every place is same for the emissions that have effects beyond household and health effects of PM  is similar around the world. Regarding IWA -International Workshop Agreement (IWA) is a temporary
Workshop agreement (that provides stoves rating until the next standards are formed) held in The Hague, Netherlands, Feb 2012 which was participated by over 80 participants (including 3 from Nepal).

One of the important issues of the discussion of the presentation was the Research gap and standards between USA and Nepal and the challenge and the common response was that
-          Nepal has special challenges because of landscape and type of combustionsources may vary, however pollutants are almost same all over the world. One of the main reasons is the technology that widens the research gaps.
-          Nepal should acknowledge where it is and think of target of project/programme.

This was followed by another discussion for which one of the core questions and discussion is outlined below:

“Does Nepal need its own stove standards and testing standardization?

Nepal needs stoves standards to sell or promote stoves. Setting up the clear benchmark/standards referring to the Tier systems set by IWA can be considered. Tier ZERO may be acceptable in some parameters. Setting up bench mark also should consider the situations like cooking indoor or outdoor and geographical conditions.

Senior Scientist, Dr. Rabindra Dhakal, National Academy of Science
and Technology (NAST)
speaks his thoughts on 'does Nepal need its own Testing Standards!'
Nepal has much more to do to have National Standards on cookstoves and this is the good initiation. Interim stove testing protocol need to be updated which was prepared in 2009based upon the available equipment and existing situation of that time. Technology upgrading and HR development are two major components to be considered for upgrading interim protocol and setting up standards.Nepal is not the voting member of ISO yet but NBSM is upgrading and working on to obtain a full membership.
The existing IWA standards are to guide the testing standards while Nepal need to set up the bench mark as guiding mechanism to choose a stove for promotion and dissemination. Also there should be a mechanism of reward and penalize on the stoves manufactured/promoted.

Conclusions:
Providing clean energy (cooking solutions) to people who needed is the main goal and standard benchmark and protocol are the tools for achieving this. The priority of the time is setting up the benchmark keeping in mind the GoN’s ambitious mission of “Clean cooking Solutions for all by 2017” and revise the interim protocol 2009 for testing standards and create uniformity in testing procedures for all the testing centres in Nepal by obtaining accreditation from NBSM to ensure quality.

Your valid comments are appreciated as we are in the very early stage regarding Cookstoves testing and cookstoves standards.



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