A PV-Supplied Cooking Solution using a Hybrid Electric-Thermal Energy Storage System

This study examines the feasibility of including a thermal energy storage as a supplementary storage method for PV-supplied off-grid application. This approach is done to reduce the cooking energy requirements which enable opportunities for use of smaller battery cell storage, and use of low-powered cooking appliances. The feasibility is evaluated considering a 5 ℓ, 500 W food safe water heater as a thermal energy storage and a 4 ℓ, 200 W slow cooker as a cooking appliance. A thermal analysis using experimental data is employed to validate the effectiveness of the storage water heater under worst-case conditions. Experimental results of the method performed in a laboratory show that the use of pre-heated water between 50 to 97.6 °C to cook rice can reduce electrical cooking energy to a range of 12.36% to 27.79% which translates to the same energy reduction for the battery capacity requirements.