Simple Solar Ovens for Free, Fun Outdoor Cooking
Posted on 19. Jan, 2010 by BrentC in DIY Solar Power, Solar Power
Building a solar oven is a fast, inexpensive home project that will not only serve as an excellent introduction to the potential of home solar power for yourself and your children, but will also give you a functional cooking device running on clean, free power. Solar food cookers consist of little more than reflectors arranged to concentrate solar energy on a cooking vessel. These range from solar panel cookers to spherical reflectors to solar boxes.
There is no shortage of material online and off to help you select and complete a project. “Cooking with the Sun: How to Build & Use Solar Cookers” by Beth and Dan Halacy includes instructions for a solar oven made of 3/4″ plywood, 1″ insulation, and mylar glued to poster board to form the reflectors. Quarter-inch tempered glass is used for the cooking surface. Together, the materials cost $25. The resulting oven will reach temperatures ranging from 375 to 400 degrees F in 45 minutes. The same book includes a design for a solar “hot plate” built on a 1/8″ base of cardboard with mylar reflectors that will attain temperatures of 650 degrees. At those levels you can fry food, steam vegetables, brew coffee or make a pizza in under half an hour.
Solarcooking.org offers recipes in addition to building instructions. The site’s photo gallery shows projects by solar oven type, with the images linking out to step-by-step directions. Additionally, visitors can see photos of solar cookers in use around the world. The site has been transferred and expanded at solarcooking.wikia.com, which is a comprehensive compendium of information on solar food preparation. In addition to listing a wide range of construction plans, the content includes the advantages and disadvantages of each style of oven including the necessary position of the sun in the sky for optimal performance.
Commercial solar ovens are available, and are, arguably, more polished and durable than DIY versions. They are also more expensive. Sun BD Corp., for instance, makes the Tulsi-Hybrid Solar Cooking Oven, which retails online for $246.49. A compromise between buying ready-made and gathering your own materials would be a solar cooking oven panel kit like those offered by GoFastandLight.com for $25.
With simple materials — mainly cardboard and mylar — you can build a functional solar oven with only common household tools required. The project is excellent for families seeking to introduce children to the concept of renewable energy and will result in a truly useful system, particularly during the summer months. Why not transform the backyard patio cook-out into a solar experiment? You’ll save energy in two ways — ondirect electrical costs from your kitchen stove and in air conditioning to offset the stove’s heat in the house — and you’ll have fun as a family doing it.
Article provided courtesy of HowToSaveElectricity.net