Solar Oven Designs To Use At Home
In most 3rd world places, where electricity and other fuel sources are hard to come by, solar oven designs have been used. Not only are they effective in cooking food, but also for water purification in sunny countries like Sudan.
And like other solar technologies, there’s no reason first world countries should not promote solar cooking at home to help save energy. Although cooking may take four times longer than conventional ovens, no electricity or fuel is used – just the power of the sun.
There have been a variety of unique solar oven designs thought up, but they can be categorized in three shapes: parabolic, panel, and box cookers.
Parabolic Shape:
With the parabolic shape, reflective metal alloy is put into a bowl-like shape, where the sunlight is then focused on a single point. The advantage of this type of design is that it efficiently uses the sun’s energy to cook food in the shortest time possible. The only drawback is that it is usually a fixed structure that is hard to transport, and it is the most expensive of the three.
Panel Cooker:
A panel cooker is any cooker made with a series of flat, reflective panels arranged to direct sunlight to a focal point.
The advantage of the panel shape is that it cheap to build, it can be folded away when not used, and therefore it is great for traveling. It may not be as effective as a parabolic design, but you can simply make one by shaping one of those foldaway windscreen blinds into parabolic shape.
Box Shape:
Very different to the other two designs, the box cooker works by trapping the sun’s heat, instead of simply focusing it on a central point. It is designed in such a way that it let’s light in, but stops that heat from escaping. As more sunlight comes in, the hotter it gets.
Essentially the entire box heats up, allowing larger quantities of food to be made at once. The box cooker is easiest of the three to make, since it can literally be made from a cardboard box, tin foil, and sheet of glass or perspex.
What’s great about most solar oven designs is that they can be built from everyday materials in a few short hours. Like a conventional oven or stove, they can be used to prepare anything – such as roasted meat, steamed vegetables, rice, fried eggs, and baked bread. And since a solar cooker is used outside, it will not heat up the kitchen and place stress on your cooling system.
To think that – according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey – almost 75% of Americans prepare at least one hot meal at home per day, 33% prepare two or more, a large amount of electricity can be saved if more of us try solar oven design at home.
There really is no excuse for not looking more into solar cooking. With a number of affordable solar cookers and free instructions available on the internet, you owe it to yourself, your kids and the environment to try one out for yourself.
