The Solar Cookers International Network is an alliance of NGOs, manufacturers, and individuals actively promoting solar cooking in more than 100 countries. This wiki-based site, which allows Network participants to edit articles, provides a platform for members to share information and to collaborate on projects and research. Solar cooking is an important part of Integrated Cooking, which also includes the use of fuel-efficient woodstoves and heat-retention cookers. If you are a solar cooking promoter, designer, or manufacturer, and you would like to be included in the Network, fill out this online form.
The site also has information for the solar cooking enthusiast including construction plans and commercial models. Both articles explain the advantages and disadvantages of the different styles of solar cookers.
November 2013
More Indian schools to get solar cookers (The Hindu) - After experimenting with solar power in cooking the noon meal for students in a corporation school, the Coimbatore Corporation has decided to provide them to a few more schools. In August, Coimbatore installed two [institutional] solar cookers at the North Coimbatore School at Rs. 68,000. ...The civic body was keen on tapping alternative sources of energy to bring down reliance on conventional sources of energy and provide a friendly kitchen environment for workers, who had been struggling with using firewood. Read more...
Solar cooking receives a new platform to speak from - The second edition of Sun Focus, a quarterly magazine devoted to concentrated solar heat has just been released. The new publication from India was founded by Dr Farooq Addullah. He explains that the magazine will focus on off-grid applications of concentrated solar technologies (CSTs) for the purpose of saving fuel oil, firewood, and LPG in industrial and commercial establishments using heat between 80 °C and 250 °C. Solar cooking plays a major role in the content. This latest edition's cover article is devoted to the latest developments of the Scheffler Community Kitchen, written by noted solar cooking designer and advocate for solar cooking education in public schools, Ajay Chandak. Read his article on page 11. Scheffler Solar Concentrators in India - Sun Focus
Women prepare a farewell dinner for the international team that had been evaluating their solar cooker project.
Only solar cooking makes something like this possible - In 2009 several hundred women from Darfur refugee camps gathered together, each carrying a pot of raw food and a folded 12" x 12" cardboard and aluminum foil CooKit. They were preparing a farewell dinner for an international team that had been evaluating their solar cooker project. The women opened their CooKits and left their pots of food to cook unattended for 90 minutes while they sat in the shade. The result was a banquet for hundreds of people. If each of these woman had been required to haul a fuel-efficient stove and a bundle of wood to this location along with her pot of food, she would have had to stay out in the sun, along with the other women, to tend her fire through the cooking process. Imagine hundreds of fires burning in the desert sun to cook what the ladies in this photo cooked with no fuel and no fire at all.
URGENT Appeal: Partnering for Haiyan storm relief needed - Are there any groups or individuals working in this region that are able to provide solar water pasteurization and cooking technology, and other resources to those affected by Haiyan? Please contact Solar Cookers International Worldwide Office.
The WAPI on right shows that pasteurization temperatures have been reached.
Study of water treatment in Kenya demonstrates the effectiveness of the WAPI - Dr. Robert Metcalf, research microbiologist, and Dinah Chienjo of FOTO worked together on a study to compare the results of various water treatment chemicals to the WAPI water pasteurization indicator used with a CooKit solar cooker. One finding of note is that "when treated with WaterGuard (3 drops/liter), subsequent Colilert and Petrifilm tests most often were negative for E. coli, except with highly turbid water sources....When water was heated in a CooKit solar cooker to melt the WAPI wax, all subsequent Colilert and Petrifilm tests were negative for E. coli." Read the study at: The Goal is Zero: A Strategy to Eliminate Water-bourne Disease in Lower Nyakach, Kenya
SunFire Solutions partners with Beyond Carbon to promote local solar cooking businesses. - SunFire Solutions and Beyond Carbon recognize that long-term solutions need to include local business communities with shared sustainability objectives. Their current SunFire Stoves Project joint venture is based in South Africa. The project's goal is to protect the area around Kruger National Park from deforestation through the implementation of solar cookers. Three hundred parabolic solar cookers were initially purchased for the project, and 213 have already gone into households as of fall 2013. With access to the solar cookers, more than ten new locally owned enterprises have been created.
September 2013
Solar cooking training in Tapachula, Chiapas, Mexico
Mexican Rotary Club trains 44 new solar cooking trainers - In conjunction with the Municipal government of Tapachula in Chiapas, Mexico, the Rotary Club of Tapachula Centenario has sponsored a number of solar cooking workshops in 2012 and 2013. Forty-four new instructors were trained in how to present solar cooking workshops back in their home communities. Restaurant staff was introduced to solar cooking in Santo Domingo, and at the Universidad Valle del Grijalva, City and Tapachula, culinary students were also introduced to solar cooking. On-site Experimental INIFAP "Rosario Izapa" trained twenty-seven people as users of alternative cooking systems. More photos here: http://tinyurl.com/kqr3fx9
Humanitarian Innovation: What's Cooking With Solar Cookers - Patricia McArdle, editor of the Solar Cooker Review and solar thermal cooking activist, relates the most recent reactions to solar cooking she has encountered while encouraging larger humanitarian groups to support this simple nonpolluting technology. "While 10s of millions of dollars have been invested over the past decade by international organizations, governments and corporate sponsors to develop cleaner burning biomass cook stoves, no funds have been allocated to help make the current generation of solar thermal cookers more durable, more efficient and less expensive." Read more...
