Solar Cooking in Vietnam

[hvirtane]

It is a quite good practice to cook sometimes something. At least if you don't eat and drink sometimes something you will most probably die.

In 2008 I was working about three months near Hanoi, Vietnam. There in rural areas ground water qualities are so bad that people are told to boil all the water before using it. They are facing other problems of cooking energy, too. Many of the local small-scale farmers are using rice-husks and other waste products of their fields for cooking.

With the support of a Finnish NGO we started there a solar cooking energy project. In the above picture I'm putting together a solar cooking machine with a local lady, one of the users of the technology. The machine is made by my good friend in India, the leader of the company called 'Tinytech Plants'.

http://www.tinytechindia.com/dpsc.htm

The design of the cooker is done by another organization:

http://www.princeindia.org/

They are now arranging a solar cooker manufacturing course.

We bought five pieces of these cookers from India and twenty pieces of Chinese made solar cookers. In the third picture my friends in the village are checking the cooking process of a Chinese made solar cooker as produced by a company called 'Yancheng Sangli Solar Energy Co. Ltd'

http://www.chinasangli.com/website/html/tyz.htm

Here in the next picture one of the ladies is taking her cooker home.

Cooking.

There are more than 600 000 Solar Cookers like this in use in the north part of China and in Tibet.

If the sunshine conditions are good the machine can cook with roughly same speeds as electric cooking plates.

Our plan is to use first factory made solar cookers for trial purposes in the villages. If the trial period will show that they are practical enough in this area we will start producing them locally.

It is not difficult to make solar cookers, some of my instructions how to design and make them are published here:

http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/solarfocus.html

People in Vietnam are working hard and they are clever utilizing their available machinery. Below a picture of transporting goods in Vietnam.

- hv

[spinningmagnets]

Great pics hvirtane! Thanks for posting this!

Its sunny where I live, so I will be making something similar. Here's a good master list of solar cooker types (of course, yours is in there, I checked right away). Depending on materials/tools available and mechanical skill, one of these would work for just about anyone.

http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Category%3ASolar_cooker_designs

[dnix71]

Vietnam is a better place for solar cooking than India. It's so hot in many places in India that people are forced to cook at midnight.

Haiti desperately needs these things. They have no vegetation left to cook with.

[richhagen]

I remember seeing a satellite image of the border area between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.  The differences in deforestation along that border were striking.  I have a - getting to be - fairly substantial PV setup, although minimal storage.  I like to hook up my electric cooker to the inverter on a bright winter day.  I can cook with my surplus power and the heat doesn't go to waste.  Of course these direct solar cookers are much simpler to implement in most places.  Rich

[domwild]

hv,

Thanks for that. Very interesting! Should be OK in Australia too with our sunshine. Great to see a Suomi doing good things in Asia.

[tecker]

One thing you really need with solar cooking that no body in the pics has on is sunglasses (really dark )

[hvirtane]

I think that there are many places in the world, where solar cooking would be successful. After long years I came to the conclusion that the way to start is to use in the site ready made cookers first and then start the local production, if those products are found successful there.

The only solar cooker model, which has so far been really successful is the Chinese one. I know that it isn't very difficult to make very similar things locally.

There is one project already in Vietnam making solar cookers. Their cookers are quite costly and their place is in Danang, quite far from our site.

http://www.vietnamsolarserve.org/eIndex.html

We visited them and tried to learn about their project. Here a picture of their cooker.

Here we are on the way back home reflecting about the project in Danang.

- hv

[hvirtane]

One thing you really need with solar cooking that no body in the pics has on is sunglasses (really dark )

The Chinese Cooker is done accurately. If adjusted correctly all the sun rays are reflected under your cooking pot. You don't need any sun glasses, if you don't need it otherwise in the bright sun. This is one of the main reasons I'm recommending to make the mirror base accurately by cement casting.

Haiti desperately needs these things.

I think that a very similar project could be tried there. First you need a little bit money to buy a limited number of ready made cookers from somewhere (I would recommend that Chinese cooker, we used in Vietnam) and then see, which way to continue. If it is feasible to start a local production or to buy a shipload of ready made cookers. I would like to work there, if somebody could arrange it.

Great to see a Suomi doing good things in Asia.  

Suomi (Finland) is a cold place, where solar cooking is a quite limited thing. But now Finland has started distributing solar cookers in some other areas in the world.

Please see:

http://cdm.ccchina.gov.cn/english/NewsInfo.asp?NewsId=2308

Personally I think that the whole carbon trade is just one more rubbish way to make more money for big companies. But if small money will be used that way for solar cooking, maybe that is feasible... The project I've worked for had nothing to do with the carbon trade thing.

The project is inside a small local democracy project in Vietnam. You can read about that in Finnish here:

http://www.ymparistojakehitys.fi/vietnam/index.html

Something more about "Ymparistö ja kehitys ry"

http://www.ymparistojakehitys.fi/index.html

- hv

[hvirtane]

Vietnam is a better place for solar cooking than India. It's so hot in many places in India that people are forced to cook at midnight.

According to my experience Vietnam is by far worse for solar cooking than India. I've visited Vietnam only once, but living in India totally maybe 1 1/2 years, because of many visits during the years.

In Vietnam the main problem seems to be the rain.

Near Hanoi rainy days are so many in a year that this condition limits the usage of the solar cookers quite severely.

In India the rainy season lasts only 1 - 2 months depending on the site in India.

It is true that it is hot there in sunshine. That is one of the reasons many people eat there late in the evening one of main meals. But most of them eat also in the daytime. You can as well keep your food as cooked in the daytime hot by a haybox until late in the evening.

The solar radiation is not very good in India because of the dust in the air. The climate is very dry many months, and so lots of dust is in the atmosphere. But the solar radiation is good enough for most of the time in most areas in India.

There has been a lot of solar coking activities in India already tens of years. But they never until now managed to make solar cooking really popular in India. I think that the main reason is that they tried to distribute there mainly solar box cookers, which cannot cook many kinds of meals at all. Chinese style parabolic cookers could become there quite successful I think...

- hv

[hvirtane]

In the above picture you can see the frame and the focusing construction of the Chinese solar cooker.

My first assistant TU with her Friend boiling water with the Indian cooker.

- hv