Request for Proposals: Low-Cost Household Cooking Energy Management Platform

Intelligent thermal and peak-load management for multi-appliance electric cooking on weak electricity supplies.

Background

MECS invites proposals from consultancies, universities, research institutes, engineering firms and consortia to develop and demonstrate a low-cost Household Cooking Energy Management Platform (CEMP). The platform shall enable households with approximately 300–1,200 W of available cooking power to prepare complete meals through concurrent use of at least two electric cooking appliances, without exceeding the safe current, apparent-power and real-power limits of the household supply or installation.

This is an applied engineering and product-development assignment. It is not limited to a literature review or software simulation. The selected respondent will be expected to establish the technical requirements, compare alternative architectures, characterize representative appliances, develop a control strategy, build a touch-safe laboratory demonstrator, complete witnessed performance tests, and provide a credible product-development and commercialization roadmap

The Engineering Challenge

The platform should manage cooking heat rather than apply simple fixed appliance priority. It should exploit appliance duty cycles and the inherent thermal storage of food, cookware and appliances, briefly reducing, delaying or interrupting heat input where this does not materially affect food safety, meal quality or cooking time. The control strategy must recognise that appliance flexibility is unequal: an EPC operating at about 700 W rather than 1 kW may only take modestly longer to reach pressure, whereas frying or cooking chapati/roti on an induction hob can become difficult below about 1 kW. These assumptions must be validated experimentally across representative appliances and foods.

The research is expected to commence no later than 15^th October 2026. All deliverables must be completed and delivered by 31^st July 2027.

Full details can be found at:

Important information

• Responses should be a maximum of 25 pages (plus required annexes and up to 3 CVs of 2 pages each)
• Responses should be submitted in Word (do not submit Powerpoint/Prezi or PDF)

• Please send all responses to mecs@lboro.ac.uk with the subject ‘ENERGY MANAGEMENT PLATFORM’.  
• All proposals must be received by Tuesday 8^th September 2026 at 23:55 (British Summer Time).
• The time will be determined using the time of arrival in the MECS inbox. Any responses received after 23:55 will be rejected.