Ajay Chandak

Ajay Chandak pictured on right

Professor Ajay Chandak is the founder of Prince India, a non-governmental organisation in Dhule, India.

We have completed an ambitious project that consisted of the manufacture, transport, installation, and commissioning for 300 community cookers at tribal schools in the Indian state of Maharashtra. These are 2.3 m diameter parabolic cookers designed by us. The order was placed by the state government on 14 February 2007 and the project was completed by 31 March 2007. M/s Essential Equipments, one of our trainees, executed the project. This is the single largest solar cooking project in the world, for dish cookers, with the installation of over 1200 m² of aperture area in just 45 days.

We conduct many training programs for developing manufacturers of parabolic cookers and our efforts are succeeding. I believe that the technology will propagate faster if we can make it accessible to all.

I am teaching in a private engineering college in Dhule. During one meeting with the college management recently, I persuaded the chairman to organise an international renewable energy festival. He promised to contribute some 30-40% of funds for such an event. My idea for the festival are as follows:

Ajay Chandak's balcony model concentrating solar cooker

1. To organise solar cooker design competition: We will keep all the technical details and many designs and design plans available on our website. Many good resources are already available on our website, www.solarcooking.org, and will be augmented. We will ask all prospective participants (most of them are likely to be engineering students) to refer to this literature and design some solar cookers of their own. All these cookers will be displayed and will be tested during the conference event and prizes will be given for the good designs. Criteria for awards will be like efficiency, cost, convenience, capabilities etc. Prizes will be awarded for the commercial and amateur categories. Separate prizes will be given for panel, oven and concentrating cookers.
2. To have project presentation competition: Prospective participants will be encouraged to visit good sites like 'Tirupati', 'Shirdi', 'Smoke free village', etc. These participants are expected to prepare a story on the project including photographs, videos, interviews, etc., and present the same during the competition. I am expecting many engineering students to get involved in the competition. It will encourage them to study good renewable energy sites in detail and present the material at the competition. Such an exercise can generate interest in renewable energy in the minds of the young.
3. To conduct a training program and present lectures by experts: As all participants coming for the event are expected to be budding engineers and science students, we plan to conduct a training program on 'Entrepreneurship opportunities in Renewable Energy' for them. I am already conducting such program for some students with fair success. Lectures from experts like Deepak Gadhia and others will also be organised during the event.

See also

• Parabolic solar concentrator for industrial heating
• Solar Energy for Quality Improvement in the Food-Processing Industry
• Innovative Balcony Model of Concentrating Solar Cooker
• Prince India

Contact

ajay@princeindia.org