Solar-powered cooker puts local clean energy start-up on the global map
What began as an effort to bring cleaner cooking to mainland villages has blossomed into a global business for a local start-up, writes Mark Sharp
The air in Beijing is notoriously polluted, but a PhD student studying climate change and air quality in western China discovered that the indoor pollution in villagers' homes was 10 times worse. The villagers were burning coal, wood and dung inside their homes while cooking on poorly designed stoves.
So Catlin Powers, a Harvard University student, along with Scot Frank, who was teaching science at Xining's Qinghai University, got their heads together to find a solution. Given the abundant sunlight in Qinghai province, the American duo figured that solar cookers would be the answer. They tried various models that were on the market but found they were either too fragile, unsafe, or not ergonomic. So they decided to develop their own.
That was the birth of One Earth Designs, a clean energy company with a mission to bring social and environmental innovations to communities around the world. The company set up a workshop in a Kwun Tong industrial building, where its team of engineers, scientists and industrial designers came up with the SolSource.
"The concept of solar cooking has been around for a long time, so we don't claim to have invented that," says Erica Young, chief design officer of One Earth Designs.
"What we have done is identify the major faults of existing solar cookers and solved them. It's portable, it's modular, it's highly reflective, it's very durable, it's lightweight, it solves a lot of the ergonomic issues and it's a lot safer to use."
The SolSource tips the scales at 18kg, compared with the average 95kg of earlier models. It is centred on a three-legged frame that can be revolved to follow the sun, and stabilised with a brake.