News log

September, 2014

• September 2104: Alex Kee was recently interviewed in Singapore Makers in the Meet a Maker feature. His green interests, including solar cooking, are varied. Read the interview: Meet a Maker: Alex Kee
• September 2014: Sanjib Rout, Chairman of the C.V. Ramen College of Engineering, is currently working with some of the remote villages around Odisha, India to introduce solar cooking. This will eliminate the need for firewood collection for seven months of the year, helping to save time and expense for the villagers. The added benefit is less stress on their local environment. Currently they have distributed fifty solar cookers.
• September, 2014: Raquel Redshirt presented her solar cooker design at the TEDxABQ 2014 conference in Albuquerque, NM on September, 6 2014. She stated that her solar cooker was a more health-conscious option in her community which has a high rate of diabetes. Read more...

The Sun Juicer lightweight parabolic solar cooker

• Successful Kickstarter for The Sun Juicer - Congratulations to Leonel Gotlibowski and The Sun Juicer on their successful Kickstarter campaign! They set a goal of $15,000 and raised a total of $19,152.
  

Read the Fall 2014 issue of Solar Cooker Review ...or see back issues.

The Sun Juicer lightweight parabolic solar cooker

• Successful Kickstarter for The Sun Juicer - Congratulations to Leonel Gotlibowski and The Sun Juicer on their successful Kickstarter campaign! They set a goal of $15,000 and raised a total of $19,152. We look forward to seeing more of The Sun Juicer in the future!

• Update on Jewish World Watch Solar Cooker Project - Jewish World Watch published their Summer 2014 Solar Cooker Project newsletter. It offers background information on their refugee camp projects, highlights of the latest developments, and how to support it moving forward. Jewish World Watch reports that it has distributed approximately 128,000 CooKits with participation rates of 75% to 100% in the camps where they have worked: Kounoungou, Mile, Oure Cassoni, Touloum, and Iridimi. They also plan to provide an additional cooking pot for 10,000 families. Read more...

August 2014

• From 'Wonderbags' to solar cooking, brilliant solutions to Africa's alarming charcoal problem - Mali & Guardian Africa (See also: Wonderbag page)

Energy needs graph of the Ram Krishna Mission Student’s Home, Mylapore, Chennai, India - Ajay Chandak

• Institutional solar cooker with heat storage allows cooking after sunset - Commissioned on October 26, 2013, the steam-based ARUN®100 solar cooking system at the Ram Krishna Mission Student’s Home, Mylapore, Chennai in India now allows early morning and evening cooking. The accompanying graph shows when they need to cook and when the mid-day sun recharges the system. Read more about it at: ARUN®100 with Thermal Storage at Ramkrishna Mission, Chennai - Ajay Chandak

3,484 children from 80+ schools participated in the previous world's largest solar cooking class in Mumbai.

• The stage is set for the next world's largest solar cooking workshop - A Bhayander, India based NGO, Keshav Srushti, in a bid to spread awareness on solar cooking, will be gathering 25,000 students from 500 schools across Mumbai on January 15, 2015 to cook solar-powered dishes. Read more...

• Solar Cookers International contributes data for US-Africa Leaders Summit - President Barack Obama announced August 6th, 2014 that the U.S. NGO community invested over $1.5 billion in Africa in 2013 and anticipates investing another $4 billion over the next three years. Solar Cookers International (SCI) was one of the members of the InterAction network collaborating to collect data on U.S. NGO aid spending in Africa. See information on SCI’s current projects and the news release.

• Solar Cookers International is hiring! - Based on needs identified at the recent SCInet Solar Cooking Convention, SCI is hiring a full-time Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist to promote data collection and project evaluation practices within the global solar cooking sector. Read full job description.

August, 2014

Professor Nandwani (right) receiving the Energy Globe Silver Medal of Honor in 2014.

• August 2014: Professor Shyam Nandwani was recognized by the Energy Globe Foundation for his work as Energy Globe Ambassador for Costa Rica since 2012 and awarded the Energy Globe Silver Medal of Honor.

• August, 2014: Update on Solar Cooker Project - Jewish World Watch published their Summer 2014 Solar Cooker Project newsletter. It offers background information on their refugee camp projects, highlights of the latest developments, and how to support it moving forward. Jewish World Watch reports that it has distributed approximately 128,000 CooKits with participation rates of 75% to 100% in the camps where they have worked: Kounoungou, Mile, Oure Cassoni, Touloum, and Iridimi. They also plan to provide an additional cooking pot for 10,000 families. More info...

• August 2014: Central Valley Solar Cookers had a great solar cooker building work shop last month with 8 cookers built, We also held a work shop for a Reedley area 4-H group where 4 more cookers were built. Yesterday, we demonstrated solar cooking at the Black-pot Cook Off in Shaver Lake. There was a lot of smoke up there so cooking was challenging, but we got it done. At our last meeting we discussed getting our club more organized, starting with writing some by-laws. If you would like to help or have access to some by-laws we could use as a template please let me know. We hope to have an evening meeting soon to work on this; perhaps at a library in Fresno or Clovis. Also discussed was making members contact information available to other members. If you would like to be on an email list available to other members let me know and I well send out a group email to everyone who asks to be on the list.

• August 2014: A group of volunteers from First United Methodist Church of Jamestown recently traveled to Moffit, N.D., to help fabricate solar ovens to be used in Haiti. The Moffit workshop is located at the home of Dave and Renae Silbernagel. Each year hundreds of volunteers fabricate and package solar oven parts in the Moffit and Volga, S.D., workshops, preparing them for shipment to Haiti. Teams of volunteers, under the direction of Jost, travel to Haiti each year to live in communities that have invited them. For 10 days, these volunteers work with Haitians to build ovens and educate people about solar cooking under the direction of the Montas and Raymonde Joseph of Haiti. Their goal is to deliver 2,300 solar ovens plus hands-on training to Haitian families every year.

See Haiti Solar Oven Partners.Haiti Solar Oven Partners

• August 2104: Steam heat storage system used for institutional cooking in India - Ram Krishna Mission Student’s Home, Chennai, India wanted to adopt solar cooking system for its hostel. However the desired cooking times and the availability of sunshine was not matching up. Breakfast is cooked at 4.00 a.m. and lunch cooking starts at 7.00 a.m., while dinner is cooked after 5.00 p.m. A steam-based system, the ARUN®100, with heat storage was designed and commissioned on October 26, 2013. Read more about it at: ARUN®100 with Thermal Storage at Ramkrishna Mission, Chennai - Ajay Chandak

• April 2014: A molecular approach to solar heat storage Researchers MIT and Harvard University have posted promising results from experiments involving energizing photo-switching molecules, known as azobenzene, to store solar heat gain for extended periods. The molecules are then triggered much later to release their energy for uses requiring heat. Apparently the approach will not be effective for generating electricity, but cooking is a prime candidate. Read more at: A molecular approach to solar power.

Sun and Ice workshop in Senegal, August 2014

Sun and Ice workshop in Senegal, August 2014

• August 2014: Stephan Zech recently posted these photos of a recent solar cooking workshop in Senegal.

Sun and Ice send off 100 parabolic solar cookers to the Dominican Republic in June 2014.

• June 2014: Stephan Zech, with Sun and Ice, reports they have just sent 100 parabolic solar cookers to the Dominican Republic.
• April 2014: Stephan Zech, with Sun and Ice, reports that they have distributed and impressive 50,000 parabolic solar cookers in the last ten years

• August, 2014: TrinySol built and installed a series of reflectors in El Sauz, Mexico. The cookers are either 10-square-meters or 16-square-meters and can cook for up to 60 people, said Gregor Schäpers. More info...