Glenergy has spent our time during Covid designing and manufacturing our own solar cooker! Working with a team of local manufacturers, we have made a robust machine that cooks for 4-6 people in about an hour, depending on the food and the conditions.
Cook food using the sun! Designed and made in Canada, the Glenergy Solar Cooker concentrates sunlight and captures it as heat inside a glass vacuum tube. The food goes on a tray that slides into the tube, allowing you to cook meals without the use of fuel or electricity. You control the temperature by adjusting the aim of the cooker, or by adjusting the optional reflector extensions. You can control the humidity inside the cooker by adjusting the cooking tray.
The Glenergy Solar Cooker is sturdy--suitable for a table on a deck, patio, or balcony, or on the ground anywhere that there is a sunny spot. Transportable more than portable, the Glenergy Solar Cooker works alone or as an addition to a more traditional outdoor cooking setup. Whether you use wood, gas or charcoal, you can save fuel by cooking some things with concentrated solar energy. Cook different foods at the same time--some on your traditional grill and some with solar.
Our cooker comes with three cooking pans that all fit on the cooking tray, so you can cook a few things at the same time just with solar. Subject to shape and size limitations (and your own imagination), you can roast, fry, bake, boil or otherwise cook pretty much anything. See Recipes.
Different foods take different times, but expect up to an hour for many things. Smaller amounts cook faster and hotter. Our blog post on How Our Solar Cookers Work has a table to reference for estimated cook times of various foods.
Take it out of the sun, turn it, shade it, or close the extensions, and it acts like a thermos--as long as you keep the cooking tray closed it will keep the contents hot for a long time.
The Glenergy Solar Cooker cooks best on a clear sunny day, but can perform well under cloudier conditions too, just slower. Because it is so well insulated, passing clouds scarcely affect the overall cooking time.
You can even cook at night if you use the GoSun Fusion tube with the 12V heating element and the GoSun Powerbank+ or 12V adapter for your own battery.
You are cooking in a tube so things might come out looking unusual, but they will come out cooked more uniformly than you can imagine.
Available options include a turntable for easy positioning and a set of reflector extensions to increase the cooking power.
Benefits
Our mission stands to motivate individuals to switch to or combine solar cooking with other methods of cooking as it reduces the production of house hold air pollution, contributes to lowering fuel expenses and harnesses the power from a renewable energy source.
Implications of Fuel-Based Cooking
Fuel-based cooking practices are taxing on the health of those relying on wood, charcoal or kerosene. What can’t be seen during the burning of these fuels is the potential for an incomplete combustion reaction. When fuel burns, it needs plenty of oxygen for a complete combustion reaction to occur. The use of inefficient stoves yields incomplete combustion--carbon particles (soot) are released that are then inhaled by those nearby. In rural East Africa, these are women and children. Sadly, the use of unsustainable fuels in combination with inefficient stoves is the cause for close to 4 million premature deaths from illness attributed to household air pollution1.
At first glance it would seem that weekly fuel expenditures are less than the cost of a solar cooker, but the long-term financial costs of fuel, and the hidden costs associated with fuel burning for basic cooking needs can make a compelling case for solar cookers to replace some of the fuel. The socioeconomic costs that are incurred by women and children in rural communities include the time spent collecting these fuels. Transitioning to solar cooking allows women to spend more time participating and contributing to their communities, and frees time for children to attend school.
Resources Cited
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