Solar Cooking

If you think about it, the sun is indeed an excellent source of energy. And it would really make sense to put this energy into good use. In fact, solar panels have been invented for this very purpose. And there are a lot of households using solar panels nowadays as well.

So, why not try solar cooking? You may have heard of solar cooking in passing before. This is because the concept of solar cooking has been out for quite some time already, if you look a bit into its history and various solar cooking articles. There have also been word about solar cooking projects, from solar cooking info that you can found on the web. This strongly suggests that solar cooking can indeed be done. It’s just that a lot of people are wary about how it should go about.

And there’s also the issue of solar cooking being inconvenient in the northern regions of the United States. Not just in the United States, but practically around the world. This is because the extent of the sun’s energy does not really reach those regions that much. So, cooking with solar energy in these areas becomes too impractical to be done already.

But for those areas that are located between the equator and around 40º north of it, then solar cooking can indeed be done here. Now that this has been established, let’s move on to one of the basic ways of employing solar cooking, and that is by building a solar oven. There are actually three kinds of solar ovens that you can choose from. There’s the heat-trap box, which basically traps heat inside it and uses it for cooking. There’s the curved concentrator, which has a shape that’s somewhat like a parabola. And then, there’s the panel cookers. Now, this type of solar oven makes use of solar panel cooking in preparing dishes. Let’s discuss each of these solar oven types in more detail.

The heat-trap box is a rectangular box that is insulated quite heavily. The box comes with a reflective panel, positioned to reflect sunlight into the box itself. This way, heat is trapped inside the box easily. Heat-trap boxes should be large enough to include a number of food containers inside it. This way, the heat would be utilized at its maximum potential. These boxes are also able to cook food at very high temperatures.

Curved concentrators, or what are commonly called as parabolic ovens as well, has a holder that is specially designed and created. This holder is positioned in the center of the parabolic oven. This particular solar oven works best at very high temperatures. Otherwise, it would not be able to give results at its best. So, you have to make sure that the oven is properly aligned with the sun. The sun is at constant movement from our point of view, as our planet revolves around the sun. In order to maximize the potential of solar cooking with the parabolic oven, you have to shift the position of the oven from time to time.

The panel cooker is just the integration of the heat-trap box and the curved concentrator. The panel cooker has the solar panels of the heat-trap box, as well as the specially designed holder of the curved concentrator. Thus, this could very well be the most effective of all kinds of solar ovens. Plus, these are not expensive to come by.

The obvious downside of solar cooking though is that the absence of the sun would render them useless. You can definitely use them during the day, but solar cooking requires high temperatures for it to work. On a cloudy day, any of these kinds of solar ovens just might not work. This is why it is best to employ solar cooking during the summer season.