| abstract
| - Solar hybrid cooking combines three elements: 1.
* A solar thermal collector. 2.
* A cook stove, which would preferably use a renewable fuel. 3.
* A straw box or retained heat cooker. File:Solar Hybrid Cooking.jpg File:Scrap Eater.jpg File:Hyb SC home.jpg File:Hyb SC sys.jpg The advantage of this system is that it can be used day or night under any weather conditions, and solar can make a contribution even if there is not enough insolation for direct solar cooking. In addition, food can be prepared faster, cooked more evenly, and with less effort. With the use of a straw box cooker, large quantities of food can be prepared without burning the food at the bottom of the pot. A shelter in Ukiah, California could never cook large quantities of food without burning until they tried retained heat cooking. When using a straw box cooker, the cooking requires less attention. If a pot of rice is being prepared, the brown rice will be cooked hot and ready to eat in 50 minutes, or can be left for 2 hours. The hot water heated in the thermal collector could be used for cooking or for washing, etc. Storing this water in an insulated container will provide hot water that night or the next morning. There are other possibilities for keeping stored water warm over night. Taking a more complete system approach, I stored the hot water generated in a bag-type solar shower in a Sun Frost “Scrap Eater” composter. The composter was 140°F and the next morning the water was hot enough for a very hot shower. Solar hybrid cooking systems could be effective in either a developed or undeveloped country. I recently used this concept in a new home. The home uses a drain- back hot water system for space heat and hot water. A separate heat exchange at the top of the storage tank skims off the hottest water. This water is dispersed through a separate faucet at the kitchen sink. On a typical summer day, 185°F was instantly available at the kitchen sink. This water could make a good cup of tea without further heating. The kitchen does not have a conventional stove. Instead of a stove, pots and frying pans with built in electrical heating elements and thermostats are used. Electricity is supplied by a grid-tied PV system. The heat in this type of pot is highly controllable and 90% of the electrical energy goes into heating the food, when making hot water or a dish like rice. Also with electrical cooking there are no combustion gasses-from propane, wood or other fuels. With the use of per heated hot water a quart of brown rice could be cooked with only 1/20 kWh of electricity on a sunny day this can be provided by a 10 watt PV panel. In other words, you could cook 40 lbs of rice with one kWh of electricity. Baking and frying can also be easily carried out with electrical pots. We constructed a well-insulated oven and were able to cook 3 one-pound loaves of bread with 0.4 kWh of electricity. Frying can also be done in insulated pans to greatly reduce energy use. Low thermal mass pans and ovens are more efficient since no energy is wasted heating up the pan or oven.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)