What You Never Knew About Solar Oven Designs

For several decades various solar oven designs have typically been used in third world regions where electricity or other fuel sources are hard to find. Solar cookers have been used effectively in sunny African countries like Sudan to not only cook food, but also for water purification and pasteurization.

But just because first world countries have enough energy supplies, it does not excuse us from using solar cooking at home and helping to conserve that energy. What’s fantastic about solar cooking is that it uses the power of the sun to cook food – though it may take 4 times longer than a conventional oven.

A number of fascinating solar oven designs have been made over the years, but they typically take one of three forms: parabolic design, panel design, or box design.

Parabolic Shape:

A parabolic solar cooker, as the name implies, is made from any reflective material in a parabolic (bowl like) shape that focuses sunlight to a single point. It is the most effective at cooking food quickly and efficiently, but, it tends to be more expensive and hard to make by hand. Furthermore, its fixed shape makes it less portable and raises some safety concerns.

Panel Shape:

Similar to the parabolic design, the panel design focuses sunlight to a single point. But, it is less rounded and made up of a number of small, flat, reflective panels.

Although not as effective as a parabolic cooker, it is safer, simpler to make, and can be folded up for portability. Panel cookers come in a number of innovative designs, the simplest being made from a fold-able, reflective windshield shade.

Box Shape:

Very different to the other two designs, the box cooker works by trapping the sun’s heat, instead of simply focusing it on a central point. It is designed in such a way that it let’s light in, but stops that heat from escaping. As more sunlight comes in, the hotter it gets.

This results in the entire area of the box to get hot and be able to cook larger parts of food at a time. This design is by far the simplest to place together – all you need is a black cardboard box with one side covered in tin foil and a sheet of clear perspex or glass on top to hold in the heat.

What I like most about solar oven designs is that they can be place together with simple materials found at home in the course of an afternoon. It’s a fun project to do with your kids, and the shapes you come up with are really limited to your imagination. And do not just reckon your solar cooker is only excellent for boiling water or steaming vegetables. People have successfully roasted meat in them and even baked bread. Another pro is that your solar cooker will be outside when used, so it will not cause your whole kitchen to heat up and place strain on your indoor cooling system – another way it helps you to conserve energy.

To reckon that – according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey – nearly 75% of Americans prepare at least one hot meal at home per day, 33% prepare two or more, a large amount of electricity can be saved if more of us try solar oven design at home.

So why not solar cooking out for yourself. You really have nothing to lose. If you are not willing to spend money on a professionally made design, why not build one at home with the kids – the internet provides a whole host of free blueprints and instructions, so try it out and have fun saving power.