By Rob Goodier
Solar cookers solve real problems in health and conservation—they promote better air quality in the kitchen and healthy forests around a community. The problem is that they don’t work at night.
The aid organization Climate Healers stumbled on the issue last year after handing out solar cookers to women in two rural Indian villages. The broad, reflective parabolas that work so well to cook rotis, rice and dhal by day were useless when the sun went down, just when the women began to prepare their families’ dinner. And they were equally useless for cooking breakfast in the early morning.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
household solar cookers r not 4 busy pple. they r 4pple who can cook during d day wen d sun is up then place d food on an insulated container to preserve d heat. we have a popular duck egg sold on d streets here in d philippines during wee hours of d morning, e.g. 1-3am. tis duck eggs wer cooked 8-12hrs b4 being sold. dey r kept in well insulated basket w/ cloth & paper! i swear, deyr really hot even at 3am!
big solar thermal cookers heat thermal oil for later use at night. but for households, thermal oil heating is not feasible. it ain’t easy goin solar (or goin green)….datz why polluters (fuel burning pple) r really comfortable.
poor urban pple w/o jobs in d philippines buy charcoal (some buy liquefied petroleum gas tanks) 4cooking not bcoz solar cookers r useless but coz dey think dey don’t have time to think bout tis solar cooker technology. mainly itz bout behavioral change….imagine poor pple becoming poorer by always buying charcoal or LPGs…..hmmmmm…..