The Solar Cooking Archive

Frequently Asked Questions

• English: Frequently-Asked Questions
• Catalan: Preguntes Més Freqüents de Cuina Solar
• Chinese:
• Farsi:
• French: Questions courantes sur les fours solaires
• German: Häufig gestellte Fragen
• Hebrew:
• Italian: Domande frequenti sulla cucina solare
• Japanese: Solar Cooking Frequently-Asked Questions
• Portuguese: Perguntas freqüentes sobre cozimento solar
• Russian:
• Spanish: Preguntas Frecuentes de la Cocción Solar
• Tshiluba: Nkonku ya pabuayi pa matshuwa adi ipika ne munya wa diba
• Urdu: Solar Cooking Frequently-Asked Questions
• Vietnamese: Những Câu Hỏi Thông Thường Về Bếp Nấu Dùng Năng Lượng Mặt Trời

Newsletters

The Benefits of Solar Cooking

• Balancing the Scales -- Reducing Inequities with Solar Box Cookers (also in Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish)
• Solar Cookers Support all of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (also in Spanish)
• Affordable Solar Cookers for the Neediest
• Calculation of potential avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions when replacing wood cooking
• Solar Ovens for Developing Countries
• Lasting Impacts of Solar Cooker Projects
• Estimate Your Cost Savings from Solar Cooking (also in Portuguese)
• Fuelwood as Percentage of Energy Consumption in Developing Countries
• The Big Adventure of a Little Solar Cooker (also in French)
• Cooking smoke: a pervasive killer in developing countries
• UN Report: Indoor Air Pollution in Developing Countries (PDF)
• Ecological Cookers: An essential Element in Bettering Household Health
• Reducing Environmental Damage Caused by the Collection of Cooking Fuel by Refugees

The Design and Science of Solar Cookers

• Compendium of Solar Cooker Designs
• Principles of Solar Box Cooker Design (also in Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish)
• The Technology of Solar Cooking - Dr. Ed Pejack
• The full text of the book The Expanding World of Solar Box Cooking
• Solar Cookers: How to Make, Use, and Enjoy (also in French)
• Food Safety and Solar Cooking (also in German, Italian, Farsi, Portuguese, and Spanish)
• The Importance of Eye Safety in Solar Cooking
• Through-the-Wall Ovens (also in French and Farsi)
• The Barbara Kerr Solar Wall Oven Do-It-Yourself Guidelines
• Tips on Construction and Cooking (also in Italian and Spanish)
• Tips and Tricks 1, 2, 3
• A History of Solar Cooking (also in Portuguese)
• Horace de Saussure and his Hot Boxes of the 1700's
• Developing an Intuitive Feel for the Dynamics of Solar Cooking (also in Portuguese, Spanish, and Urdu, and Vietnamese)
• The Villager Sun Oven
• Solar Cooking on the Roof
• Solar Cookers and Other Cooking Alternatives
• Solar Oven Trackers (also in French)
• Solar Tracking With A Box-Style Cooker
• Tests of the Solar Funnel and Bowl Cookers in 2001
• A Parabolic Cooker for Unattended Cooking
• The Kerr-Cole Large Solar Panel/Propane Hybrid Stoves
• Making a Parabolic Reflector Out of a Flat Sheet (also in French)
• An Alignment Template for Unattended Solar Cooking
• Robustness of a Reflective Solar Cooker
• Side-By-Side Comparison of the Various Panel Cookers
• Theories behind a Chinese Reflective Solar Cooker
• Greenhouse Enclosure Comparison Tests
• More on this topic in the Solar Cooking Archive Wiki

Performance Testing and Standards

• Solar Oven Development and Testing Project
• Rating Solar Cookers (also in French)
• Testing and Reporting Solar Cooker Performance
• International Standards for Testing Solar Cookers
• Development of a Comparative Framework for Evaluating the Performance of Solar Cooking Devices (Word Doc)

Pots, Glazings, Reflectors, Etc.

• Pot with Integrated Greenhouse for Solar Panel Cooker
• Comparison of Lids for Greenhouse Pots for Solar Panel Cookers
• Information on the solar absorbtivity and emmitance of various materials
• Converting a Box Cooker to Have Round Inner Walls
• Investigation of Reflective Materials for the Solar Cooker
• Program for calculating the shape of parabolas for concentrating solar cookers
• Tests using a photovoltaic cell to compare reflectors and various glazing materials
• Using Spinning Liquids to Simplify the Construction of Parabolic Reflectors in Solar Cookers
• Investigation of Polycarbonate as a Suitable "Greenhouse" Material for the Solar Cooker
• Recipe for making wheat paste (also in French, Lingala, Portuguese, Spanish, Tshiluba)
• More on this topic in the Solar Cooking Archive Wiki

Other Uses of Solar Cookers

• Non-cooking uses of box solar cookers
• Canning Fruits with a Solar Box Cooker (also in Farsi, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish)
• The WHO Golden Rules for Safe Food Preparation
• Sterilizing medical waste in a solar box cooker
• A Simple Solar (Sunflower) Autoclave Design
• The Use of the Solar Panel Cooker for Medical Pressure Steam Sterilization
• Using a Solar Oven as a Radiant Refrigerator at Night