Solar cooking is such a simple idea, yet it may have huge benefits for the environment. Solar ovens can be found in many different forms, in many different sizes and in many different places around the world. So, what exactly are solar ovens?
Solar ovens come in three basic forms:
- Box cookers,
- Panel cookers, and
- Parabolic cookers
If you decide you want your own solar cooker, consider the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Box cookers are literally shaped like a box. While these can cook large quantities of food evenly without the need to monitor them, they take a long time to cook. Panel cookers are made up of flat panels which focus the rays into the food. The advantage of panel cookers is that they are extremely cheap and easy to build. Parabolic cookers are shaped like parabola dishes, or a bowl which focuses the light so precisely that it cooks about as fast as on a conventional stove. The disadvantage is that users have to continuously adjust the dish to follow the sun.1
In the United States, solar ovens are popular for a variety of different purposes. Cooking food typically entails using electricity, natural gas, propane, or wood, all of which cost money to use and have carbon emissions that contribute to global warming. Solar cooking, on the other hand, has zero carbon emissions and zero cost to use, since all the energy comes directly from the sun.2 Many people like to use them in their backyards in order to slow-cook a meal, keeping all the flavor and nutrients. Some people even buy solar cookers in case of natural disaster, so that they can cook without electrical power. Hikers and campers can use these to cook where there is no nearby electric source.3
Worldwide, there are some impressive large-scale solar cooking projects. A temple in Tirupathi, India that cooks 30,000 meals a day hosts a community kitchen that uses solar cooking technology.4 In Mount Abu, India, there is an even bigger solar kitchen which has the capacity to cook up to 38,500 meals a day. Both use parabolic dish concentrators, which all reflect sunlight to receivers, generating enough heat to make steam that gets carried back down to the kitchen inside to be used for cooking.5
As impressive as grand solar projects are, solar cooking can actually save lives. Half the people in the world currently use wood or dung to cook their food, which creates huge problems for both people and the environment. Deforestation exacerbates global warming, landslides, and desertification. Smoke created from traditional oven cooking causes respiratory infections that have been attributed to 5 million young children dying every year. Solar cooking, on the other hand, causes much less deforestation and smoke. Solar ovens might also alleviate diseases spread through contaminated water which cause 80% of the world’s illnesses. Solar box cookers can easily pasteurize water, providing safe, clean water. A major benefit of solar cooking is that it could free people, usually women, from the hours they spend searching for firewood.6
Interested in trying out solar cooking for yourself? You can either make one yourself out of cardboard and tin foil, or you can buy some online. They range from the cheap, such as the CooKit at $25, to the very expensive, the El Sol Parabolic Solar Barbeque at $650, which can cook for up to 12 people. A really cool solar cooker that’s not yet on the market is the BCK solar cooker, looks like a parabolic solar cooker but then the cloth sides fold in to look like a thermos: http://designawards.wordpress.com/2007/09/05/bck-solar-cooker/.
Solar cooking is a “hot” innovation in countries all around the world. While solar ovens just sound cool, if they could become more mainstream, they could really help the environment and save millions of lives. Who knew something so delicious could be so good for the world?
