Solar Oven

A solar oven, also called a solar cooker, is great for outdoor barbeques, but especially useful for underdeveloped countries to prepare meals and boil water for drinking. They require no fuel like propane, coal or wood. Nor do they need any fire or produce harmful smoke. All they need is direct sunlight, however clouds and shadows are its kryptonite. The best cooking hours are when the sun is most intense, between 10am and 2pm year round. The most common three types of solar cookers are heat-trap boxes (also called box cookers), curved concentrators (parabolics) and panel cookers.

Heat-trap boxes are an insulated box with a lid reflector and a transparent glass or plastic window on the top to let in the light and trap the heat. Cooking times are not that fast but temperatures of 150 degrees Celcius can be reached.

Curved concentrators, also called stove cookers, use a parabolic geometrically shaped reflector (looks like a satellite dish) to concentrate the reflected sun into a focal point underneath your cooking pot. Be sure NEVER to stare into the light, and use oven mitts as it get very hot.

Panel cookers are basically box cookers and stove cookers merged together and they are the most popular used around the world. It has three walls and a floor that are all reflective and angle at the pot place in the center.

Hybrid solar cooker is a solar box oven or parabolic cooker that also works on electricity, gas, or wood - but seriously, folks, where's the fun of that?

All of these are easy to build DIY solar projects and the basic materials used are only aluminum and plywood. Let the Geek show you how! Most importantly, in countries where many travel miles a day to collect firewood and clean drinking water is scarce, these are really a life saving and sustaining tool.

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