Solar panel cooker designs

See below: All solar panel cooker designs on this wiki.

Solar panel cookers, due to their ease of construction and low-cost materials, are the simplest solar cookers to build and the most common. Tens of thousands of these are in use in Refugee camps around the world.

CooKit

In the year 1999, a very simple, low-cost solar cooker was presented by Prof. Roger Bernard (1995) of France. The original model was modified by Solar Cookers International and named the CooKit. There are simpler panel cookers and some that cook better than the CooKit, but the CooKit folds down to be the size of a large notebook. This makes it one of the most popular solar cookers on the planet. The main CooKit article shows many different variations.

Panel cookers made from windshield shades

Kathy Dahl-Bredine developed the Windshield Shade Solar Cooker while experimenting with various designs of cookers to introduce in the indigenous communities where Kathy lives and works in southern Mexico. She hit upon an utterly simple way to make an instant portable solar oven by taking an automobile windshield shade and turning it into a solar funnel.

The HotPot

Carrying this concept of glass bowl, recently Darwin Curtis and Louise Meyer of SHE have come out with a specially designed HotPot of glass surrounded by foldable sparkling reflector panels. They have won a grant from the World Bank to distribute this type of cooker.

Solar funnel cookers

Steven Jones has another interesting variation, which he calls the Funnel Cooker. The Funnel Cooker has several advantages. It is simple to construct and store, and there is little waste of unused construction materials. Supporting the funnel may pose problem, but this can easily solved with placing the funnel in an open box, as shown in the photo. Two small sticks or stones can also be propped up at the back to hold the funnel in the right position. Funnel Cooker construction plans

Molly Baker has presented another interesting variation of the Funnel cooker. The cooker is made from stiff cloth and the inner lining is a reflective material, perhaps like the one produced by Clear dome Solar. When the fold is opened and plastic tubes are inserted at the top and bottom, the cooker forms a stiff cone ready to cook. The innovator has not shown a greenhouse enclosure, but the cooker will perform better with one. Molly Baker solar oven construction plans

Anna Pearce has modified the cone-shaped hat of the far east regions into a multipurpose device which can be used as a hat, as a vessel to cook food and carry water, and also as a cone-type solar cooker called Anahat cooker.

These funnel cookers should work well, but some appear to have a limited reflective surface area. Bigger reflectors should work better.

Richard Pocock of South Africa has been working on solar cookers for over 17 years, and has developed two interesting designs, the Pentagon Star and Suncatcher. Pocock claims, though the Suncatcher design looks like a variant of Cookit, it was developed independently, starting with a parabolic cooker design approach. He wanted to make the parabolic cooker simpler, and landed on Suncatcher design. As the photo illustrates, the design does convey more sunlight to the cooking pot, though most of it is from above, as in the Cookit type of designs.

Another interesting design has been created by Teong Tan from Singapore. He realized that a cooker with an aperture at 60 degrees captures most of the sunshine, similar to the Funnel Cooker. But the Funnel cooker is unstable without additional support, and hence Teong designed a new cooker called Fun-Panel. It combines the best features of Funnel cooker as well as cookit. Preliminary studies indicate that it performs well.

Teong is a devoted solar cooker designer and enthusiast, and some of his other designs include the DATS cooker, Suntastic, and the Sunny Cooker.

Teong has conducted a comparative study on greenhouse enclosures as well, and finds that the HotPot works well. Details can be found in his site mentioned above. (Study detailed in solarcooker.org site as well)

Dual Angle Cookers

There seems to be renewed interest in this type of solar cooker that shares some of the properties of panel cookers like the CooKit and of parabolic cookers.

DATS

Teong Tan fabricated what he calls the DATS cooker, meaning a Double Angled Twelve Sided Solar cooker. The motivation for this design was mainly to avoid the transparent plastic enclosure/guard around the cooking pots that is used to reduce heat loss.

Parvati Solar Cooker

In India, Ravindra Pardeshi and his wife Shobha, developed a similar cooker, the Parvati Solar Cooker, named after the inventor's grandmother. They took inspiration from Professor Mannan’s improvement of a VITA Design. They initially fabricated Professor Jone's Funnel cooker, but then developed the Parvati design. They have conducted a number of experiments and suggest that stacking the vessels one above the other gives better results than placing them side by side. Parvati website

They have also developed new design. It is the Pardeshi Double Funnel Cooker. They have have a ray trace diagram showing the sun's movement as it passes over the cooker, which should be useful for other solar cooker designer to review.

See also

• Construction plans for many different solar panel cookers

External links

• Evaluation of Several Original and Commonly Used Solar Cooker Designs - Dane Dormio and Dr. Steven Jones

• Use of the solar panel cooker for medical pressure steam sterilization - Ms. Barbara Kerr and Mr. James Scott

All solar panel cooker designs

Note that as scroll down below the list, you will see photos of each of the solar panel cooker designs on this wiki.