rdfs:comment
| - Direct solar thermal energy can be used to power solar cook stoves, which can save time, work, money, and combustible fuel in suitable circumstances. Unlike solar photovoltaic energy, which requires expensive PV cells to convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal energy can be captured instantly and directly with a solar cooker, which generates zero emissions heat for cooking food and boiling water. By comparison, a one hundred square foot PV array would be needed to power a single hotplate. Solar thermal energy can also be used for solar hot water heaters, sterilizers and food driers.
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abstract
| - Direct solar thermal energy can be used to power solar cook stoves, which can save time, work, money, and combustible fuel in suitable circumstances. Unlike solar photovoltaic energy, which requires expensive PV cells to convert sunlight into electricity, solar thermal energy can be captured instantly and directly with a solar cooker, which generates zero emissions heat for cooking food and boiling water. By comparison, a one hundred square foot PV array would be needed to power a single hotplate. Solar thermal energy can also be used for solar hot water heaters, sterilizers and food driers.
* Health Emissions: Use of direct solar thermal energy to power cookstoves produces no smoke, thus eliminating health impacts associated with cooking over open fires or crude stoves.
* Climate Impacts: Solar energy use emits no greenhouse gasses and does not contribute to climate change.
* Fuel Efficiency: While the efficiency of solar thermal energy for cooking is dependent on sunshine, this “fuel” is available free of charge, making it an extremely cost-effective solution, especially for populations with limited access to other fuel sources.
* Fuel Availability: Most people cooking over open fires or on crude stoves live where sunshine is abundant and solar cooking is possible, as indicated by NASA’s solar insolation maps. However, in the sun’s absence there is often a need to burn combustibles as well, in which case multiple stove technologies can compliment each other. In some places solar can be the main source of household energy, while in others it is an excellent back-up energy source. As with other fuel efficient stoves, solar cookers are unfamiliar to most cooks in the developing world who are used to cooking over an open flame, so their adaptation to these stoves requires careful training and follow-up.
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