Ideas are Powerful

by Brad
(Las Vegas)

Click on each image


The recent issue of the Solar Cooker Review is available here:

http://solarcooking.org/newsletters/scrnov10.htm

and as I reviewed it, I noticed many interesting things. The parabolic cooker made by Spain's AlSol company was featured, and just last week I was watching their You-Tube videos and wishing I had a product like that in the US.

AlSol

The Solar Cookers International

http://www.solarcooking.org/

made a presentation to the United Nations yesterday, and hopefully they include the ASSC (All Season Solar Cooker) design in their collection of solar cookers. Personally, I think that design is the best solar panel cooker, and I love to play with the design to see what transpires.

This week, the inventor of this design, Jim LaJoie, and I talked about many things, including cooking concepts, and ideas on how to spread his design as something easily grasped. Recently I saw a CooKit picture, that was unitless.

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Cookit

which was called the "King variation", and I thought about how effective that could be.

So I started with the first picture (above), a general, not-to-scale layout of the ASSC, with extended top and bottom reflector areas. Although I know Jim prefers to focus the sun, to increase cooking efficiency, using sun-sights on the cooker's edges, I'm an incurable Tim Taylor type of thinker, who believes bigger is better. The larger the catch area, the better....and that's my next project...to prove or disprove my thinking with side-by-side ASSC's...hey, I've been wrong before but until proven wrong...

Okay, let's take that first picture and color code it based on its dimensions. Doing this helps you think of the cooker as flexible. You can take that second picture and see that the third picture is the list of sections you will need to put it together with. Going further, I made a simple spreadsheet which allows you to choose your tailored cooking box size, and have the needed panel size to make the complete unit, calculated for you.

The modular idea of the ASSC, also allows someone to collect the pieces of the puzzle, that is the ASSC, and tape it together on the backside. This also allows several people to work on different shapes, cutting them out, and applying reflective tape, simultaneously. Have a classroom of kids? Assign them all a piece. Have them put it together as a team. They'll grasp the isosceles triangle, rectangle, square, etc. Talk about the angle of the sun hitting each section.

Will an angle less than 45 degrees escape the cooking box? How many BTUs or Watts are truly being captured? (See my other spreadsheets). You get the idea.

Down-loadable spreadsheet for the All Season Solar Cooker ASSC Spreadsheet


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Phew!!, Lots of great information.

thanks again,

Nathan
Admin.