Solar Kitchen for Urban Amhara

Rational

Fuel prices are increasing from time to time making the urban dweller spend more for fuel. The price of kerosene increased three times the last few years. This has potential effect on the majority low income citizens. Biomass is predominantly used in the region and various options exist now for efficient use of fuels, for instance, Lackech stove, Mirt Mitad and Gonziye. They contributed well on reducing the fuel use and environmentally, but, we still need to cut trees and buy fuels every now and then. Solar kitchen is very innovative ideas leading no fuel cost once the system in installed and immense environmental benefits.

Solar cookers promoted so far have not shown commercial success. Solar cooking is still an active area of research. [1] SK-14-cooker developed by the German, [2] can cook for 20 people and has 600W rating, but the cost is very expensive, 600birr. The figure 1 shows the cooker.

Figure 1 SK-14 solar cooker left, cooker in Meki center, left is flat plate cooker

The solar cooker is the left is distributed by Meserete Christos Church Relief Development Association, [3] is now on field test around Meki region. The study, [1] investigated the flat plate solar cooker with storage, shown in fig 1. It concluded that for traditional foods depending on the collectors is more important that depending on storage. Also, there is some chance for acceptance of the cooker considering the need for alternative fuel.

Objectives

Generally it is desired to design and develop a solar kitchen for use in the urban localities of Amhara region.

Specifically,

Solar cooker types and designs developed so far are investigated to improve the performance and reduce the cost. Alternatively, a new design could also be developed. This design target a family with 5 members; three children and two adults.

Experiment on and optimize the solar cooker to arrive at the final design with optimum performance and least cost.

Manufacturing, distribution and commercialization are carried out together with ministry of energy and mines and Bahir-dar technical and vocational training center.


Continue to PART TWO