Gregory's ServerIt's nuts that the solar oven works even on totally overcast days. It's 6'C outside, windy and overcast. We were able to cook a whole tray of seitan this morning. Why isn't this more known
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 @neauoire I'm probably old, but as a kid in the Midwest US, we built a solar oven in science class and cooked sausages in it in around -20°C weather. But apparently that's not a thing anymore? Not sure why @neauoire Lack of consumables. Not good. Burn gas, release CO2, water hot, sometimes boom, hurr durr. I guess it does not work indoors or at night, not "convenient". How much do those cost and how hard is the maintenance/cleaning?  @neauoire You know what would be really cool? Imagine having a heat pipe transporting the energy inside your boat and keeping the solar collector on top. 1 m2 of pipes could make about 0.5-1 kW so becoming, in principle, equal to a standard electric oven. Being 200-250C the maximum temperature you can reach with standard heat pipes, it's not totally impossible to build it! ;-) @zabow we were discussing something like it yesterday! Doing it safely is the tricky right, if we get capsized and then there's shards of glass everywhere it could get dicey @neauoire yeah, doing that kind of experiments on a boat is not ideal... I'm thinking about land-based solar collectors that are used just to heat water, but if you don't use enough water you lose a lot of energy. That alone makes me always prefer installing (more) PV panels that are not limited to heating. But in this case you could use the system to cook too and in some scenarios it could be advantageous, especially in areas with no electric grid. |
@neauoire at my parents' they've got them for like 20 years to produce hot water and work decently even in winter.