The 3 Main Kinds Of Solar Oven Designs
For several decades various solar oven designs have typically been used in third world regions where electricity or other fuel sources are hard to find. Solar cookers have been used effectively in sunny African countries like Sudan to not only cook food, but also for water purification and pasteurization.
But just because first world countries have enough energy supplies, it does not excuse us from using solar cooking at home and helping to conserve that energy. What’s great about solar cooking is that it uses the power of the sun to cook food - though it may take 4 times longer than a conventional oven.
A number of interesting solar oven designs have been made over the years, but they typically take one of three forms: parabolic design, panel design, or box design.
Parabolic Solar Cooker:
A parabolic solar cooker, as the name implies, is made from any reflective material in a parabolic (bowl like) shape that focuses sunlight to a single point. It is the most effective at cooking food quickly and efficiently, however, it tends to be more expensive and hard to make by hand. Furthermore, its fixed shape makes it less portable and raises some safety concerns.
Panel Shape:
A panel cooker is any cooker made with a series of flat, reflective panels arranged to direct sunlight to a focal point.
The panel shape is not as efficient as the parabolic shape, but it has the advantage of being foldaway, portable, and rather simple to make. These cookers can be found in a number of interesting deigns, but the simplest is by far the one made by folding one of those reflective windscreen blinds.
Box Shape:
The third type, a box cooker, operates rather differently to the parabolic and panel cookers. Instead of reflecting light to a central point, it absorbs, traps and intensifies the light to create heat.
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 I like most about solar oven designs is that they can be put together with simple materials found at home in the course of an afternoon. It’s a fun project to do with your kids, and the shapes you come up with are really limited to your imagination. And do not just think your solar cooker is only good for boiling water or steaming vegetables. People have successfully roasted meat in them and even baked bread. Another pro is that your solar cooker will be outside when used, so it will not cause your whole kitchen to heat up and put strain on your indoor cooling system - another way it helps you to conserve energy.
And if you think that over 75% of American households use their oven or stove on a daily basis - a tremendous amount of energy could be conserved if more of us used solar oven designs during summer.
So why not solar cooking out for yourself. You really have nothing to lose. If you are not willing to spend money on a professionally made design, why not build one at home with the kids - the internet provides a whole host of free blueprints and instructions, so try it out and have fun saving power.