Cooking Fuel Cost Comparison and Preferences among Electricity Consumers In Nigeria

Abstract

This work investigates the electricity consumers’ fuel preferences for cooking through online sharing of questionnaire. It also compared the cost of using three fuels for cooking through experimentation and created equations to serve as templates for cost comparison. These templates were used to compare cost of cooking fuels for selected States in Nigeria. The fuels considered are liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), kerosene and electricity. The results obtained from the analysis of the responses show that higher percentage of respondents prefers to use LPG for cooking because they feel it is cheap and readily available. Many of the respondents don’t like to use electricity because it is considered to be expensive and not readily available. However, contrary to the believe by many respondents, the results of the experiments showed that electricity is the cheapest of all the three fuels considered and LPG is the most expensive for the location and time of study. The results comparing the pre and post economic reforms costs of the cooking fuels for selected States of the country are also presented.