kristin laing

Solavore on Ecowatch.com

3 Solar Ovens that give you the power to Cook with the Sun

solavore sport on Ecowatch

With barbecue season around the corner, what could be more planet-friendly than cooking with the sun? Instead of gas/electricity/charcoal/wood, a solar cooker harnesses heat from the sun to cook food.

From baking cookies to frying eggs, these pollution-free devices work wherever there is sunshine, regardless of how cold it is outside. With ample sunlight, most get into temperatures between 250-350 degrees Fahrenheit, with some top end varieties going nearly 600 degrees.

Solar cookers come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges and you can even DIY. Here are instructions for solar box cookers, parabolic cookers and panel cookers. And here’s a kid-friendly version from NASA that basically requires a cardboard box, plastic wrap, aluminum foil and regular office supplies.

For those of you who are less handy, check out some of our favorites you can buy online.

Solavore Sport

Think of the Solavore Sport as a crockpot within an oven. Here’s how it works: Sunlight enters through the transparent cover and hits internal cooking pots that transform light into heat. Heat builds inside the longer it sits while the exterior of the box remains cool to the touch.

TreeHugger’s Derek Markham recently reviewed the unit and said that the 9-pound cooker is “light and portable, and a convenient addition to home cooking.”

The Sport can roast, bake, steam using only solar energy. “Using the natural moisture in meats, fish, and vegetables, the Sport cooks without additional water so all the natural vitamins and minerals are retained, giving food a wonderful rich flavor,” the company says.

“Using something as simple and elegant as a black box with a lens on top, putting your pots inside and knowing that all day the sun’s going to be making that dinner,” Solavore CEO Anne Patterson says in the video. “There’s something just beautiful about that simplicity.”

The company is even paying it forward with each purchase. Every solar oven that’s purchased helps fund a Solavore Sport somewhere in the world where an open fire is still the main kitchen appliance.  Read the entire article here.

Treehugger reviews the Solavore Sport

Simmer like a crock pot and bake like an oven, using the clean energy of sunlight.

While most of the attention on solar as a viable renewable energy resource these days may focus on using photovoltaic (PV) panels to generate clean electricity, it's not necessary for us to turn sunlight into electrons to put solar to work. Yes, installing a solar electric system is getting cheaper by the minute, and could be a great investment for a business or homeowner, but honestly, that's not for everybody, whether it's an issue of not owning the property, or not having enough space, or not being able to qualify for financing or leasing. Community solar, and the option of choosing renewable energy from local utilities, are becoming more widely available these days, and we're starting to see a shift in clean energy adoption, but we've still got a ways to go before renewable home electricity really gets off the ground.

However, there is another incredibly easy and affordable solar technology that can be put to work almost immediately, with no long-term financial commitments or construction involved, and although it's certainly not a new thing, by any means, it really ought to be considered a clean tech solution and used more widely. Solar thermal is the general term for using the sun's energy as heat, which can be put to work to supply domestic hot water, or used to heat a space, or to superheat water for steam production (which then drives turbines generating electricity), or a number of other purposes.

But perhaps the simplest way, and the most accessible way, to use it is to cook our food with it, using a solar oven, and Solavore's Sport model could be the gateway appliance to cleaner cooking.  I recently got to spend some time using the Sport, which is a reboot of the once popular Solar Oven Society (SOS) model that went out of production in 2013, and found it to be easy to use, light and portable, and a convenient addition to home cooking. (I previously covered Solavore's 'buy one give one' Indiegogo campaign, which aimed to enable more solar ovens in the developing world to act as economic tools for change in those communities.) 

Read the full article here.

Gear Review: The Solavore Sport in Misadventures Magazine

Read the entire review on the Misadventures Magazine website. Here is an excerpt:

“The second day, I decided to cook a chili recipe from Solavore’s user guide (which, along with their website, includes all sorts of dishes to try out). Unlike the dip, the chili recipe included raw meat; and I like my chili with rice, which can also be tricky to cook right–so this was a more challenging test. To top it off, that day I started cooking in the morning, before the sun was at its peak, and it was also a bit cloudy out.

Luckily, though, the Solavore comes prepared for just these sorts of conditions, and includes solar reflectors, designed to funnel the sunlight onto the oven and trap every last bit of heat. After attaching my reflectors, it took about 30 minutes for the oven to reach 200 degrees, and about three hours overall to cook my chili and rice all the way through.

I probably could have left both dishes in for about a half hour more, to really let the spices simmer and the rice soak a little longer, but the smell when I popped open the plastic cover at the three-hour mark was absolutely amazing. (Like, knocked-me-over-amazing.) And I was hungry. The rice was a bit undercooked, but I chalk that up to my inexperience with the oven. Overall, the Solar Oven Chili definitely hit the spot.”

Solavore Sport in Mother Earth News

Everyday Solar Cooking

We’ll show you how to build a solar oven, so you can create savory meals while cooking without fuel.

By Joel Dufour 
August/September 2015

solavore sport in mother earth news

Summer’s arrived and the heat is inescapable. You don’t want to turn on the stove to make dinner, which will heat up the house even more. If you’re like me and don’t have air conditioning — or if you’re energy conscious and keep the AC low — cooking indoors can be unbearable. Instead, why not use the source of all this heat to your advantage?

Solar radiation is the most prolific source of energy on our planet. About 84 billion kilowatt-hours of light reach Earth every day — more than four times our global energy consumption. The challenge is to efficiently harness this energy. Most people settle for gathering solar energy by eating vegetables from their gardens or catching its reflection with their cameras. Trap that energy in an insulated box with some food — then you’ll really be cookin’!

The functioning principles of a solar oven are simple: concentrate, convert, contain. Sunlight — or visible light — is concentrated by several reflective surfaces to pass through a glass lid into an insulated box. A pot of food you put inside the box will absorb the light and convert it into longer-wavelength infrared energy, or heat. The insulation will inhibit the heat from escaping, and the wavelengths will be too long to pass back through the glass lid. So, they’ll bounce around and heat up your food. Ever leave your car windows closed on a bright, warm day? Then you’ll recognize the basic principles of solar cooking.  Read the entire article here.

Press Release: Solavore Participates in Cambodian Renewable Energy Technology Pilot

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 15, 2015 

SOLAVORE PARTICIPATES IN CAMBODIAN RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNOLOGY PILOT

Solavore™ Sport Solar Oven Tapped to Reduce Fuel-Wood Needs of Smallholder Farmers

(Austin, Texas) – Solavore, LLC, a women-owned social enterprise committed to the manufacture and global distribution of clean cooking technology, has been selected to participate in a pilot test of alternative renewable energy technologies in rural Cambodia. The project is jointly financed by the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGC) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency based in Rome. Additional funding has been secured from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP).

Over 80% of the rural population of Cambodia depends on firewood and charcoal for their household energy needs. As a result, women and children suffer disproportionately from eye infections and respiratory illness – pneumonia is the number one killer of young children worldwide. In rural Cambodia, such firewood consumption leads to deforestation and the resulting erosion and nutrient depletion negatively impacts the soil upon which farmers depend for their livelihoods.

The Royal Government of Cambodia has prioritized the agriculture sector's contribution to national development, and renewable energy is a key element to achieving this objective particularly with low-cost alternatives. In addition to solar, the project will explore biogas, small-scale-biomass gasifiers, solar water pumping technologies and high-efficiency wood-burning stoves.

The Solavore Sport was selected for its lightweight, rugged durability, cooking capacity and low cost. In addition to being a 100% renewable energy appliance for daily family meal preparation, the Sport effectively pasteurizes water and efficiently dehydrates food. This provides an important means of increasing shelf life and increasing the value of products, for example transporting dried produce to market as opposed to perishable fruits and vegetables.

“We are thrilled to be invited by IFAD to participate in this important pilot for rural families in Cambodia,” commented Anne Patterson, Solavore CEO. “Solar ovens dramatically reduce fuel-wood consumption and health impacts and are an important component of the renewable energy solution for rural households.”

IFAD’s project, Building Adaptive Capacity Through the Scaling up of Renewable Energy Technologies in Rural Cambodia (S-RET), will benefit approximately 10,000 rural households across five provinces in Cambodia. Following the implementation stage, on-going activities will be folded into the IFAD-funded Agriculture Development and Economic Empowerment project in Cambodia.

ABOUT Solavore: is a women-owned manufacturer of solar ovens whose mission is to promote clean-cooking technology around the world. The Solavore Sport oven was purpose-built by solar-cooking experts for maximum efficiency, durability and ease of use. Solavore pledges to use profits to remain independent and self- sustaining while providing clean-cooking alternatives to the world’s 3 billion people SOLAVORE/two who are still cooking over open fires. For further information please visit www.solavore.com. Follow them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/solavore, on Instagram and on Twitter @Solavore.

ABOUT IFAD: The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) invests in rural people, empowering them to reduce poverty, increase food security, improve nutrition and strengthen resilience. Since 1978, IFAD has provided nearly US$16.6 billion in grants and low-interest loans to projects that have reached about 445 million people. Smallholder farmers and rural families often feel the brunt of climate change - extreme cycles of storms, droughts and floods threaten the ecosystems they rely upon. IFAD’s Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) is the largest global climate adaptation program for smallholder farmers.

*** MEDIA CONTACT:
Stef Shapira
Perennial Public Relations
281.748.9474
[email protected]

Melissa Grady  
Perennial Public Relations
281.748.9474 540.219.4999
[email protected]

Solavore Sport on Gizmag.com

Solavore camping oven cooks and bakes with the power of the sun

Most of the equipment we saw at Overland Expo came in large, XL and XXXL sizes, but there were also a few interesting accessories on show. The Solavore oven is a simple cooking device that transforms the sun's rays into baking and slow-cooking heat.

solavore-sport-on-gizmag.jpg



The Solavore Sport isn't the first outdoor cooking contraption to capitalize on the energy source literally dropping from the heavens. We've seen others like the GoSun Stove and SolSource. Solavore brings a different form factor, however, aimed at both slow cooking and baking.

What we like about the Solavore Sport is its ultra-simple design and ample size. It's basically a portable greenhouse box. The black interior lining attracts the sun's rays and the insulated walls and polymer lid keep the heat in, turning the interior into an effective oven with temperatures up to 300 ºF (149 ºC).

The Solavore Sport is not to be confused with a propane-powered camp stove or grill, and is not the solution for racing the setting sun to get your steaks or burgers cooked. It provides an average heat range of 210 to 260 ºF (99 to 127 ºC) and is meant to work as a slow cooker. It's sold with a pair of 3-qt (2.8-L) black granite wear pots that hold your meal and slow cook it over the course of several hours.

Cooking times will vary based on food type and sun conditions, but Solavore's general rule of thumb is that it'll take twice the time of conventional methods, like home oven cooking, plus a half-hour for the oven to preheat. If you're able to get the Sport oven to around the same heat as a slow cooker, cooking time will be comparable. So on a camping trip, you could start cooking lunch or dinner in the morning, go enjoy the outdoors, then come back to a cooked meal, much like you might do with a slow cooker at home. Because of its low maximum temperature, Solavore promises that the oven won't burn your food.

Solavore constructs the base of the oven out of an injection-molded resin reinforced with glass fibers. The interior is lined with black powder-coated aluminum, and 1-in (2.5-cm)-thick water-impervious foam insulation sits between the liner and the resin base. Solavore lists the R-value at 6.5 and says that the insulation keeps the exterior cool to the touch, so that you can handle the oven while it's cooking. The double-layer transparent lid is made from a vacuum-formed polymer and sits snugly around the edge of the oven, securing with metal clips. The unit weighs 9 lb (4 kg) empty and measures about 27 x 17 x 12 in ( 68.5 x 43 x 30.5 cm).

The Sport oven is angled at 30 degrees for direct overhead sunlight and can also be placed on its side to increase the angle to 60 degrees for lower-angled winter sun. The available fold-up reflector sits around the outer edge and improves sunlight collection.

Unfortunately, we missed the carrot cake that Solavore baked up at Overland Expo, but the traveling word around the show was that it was quite good. And just the idea of baking a cake at camp with a relatively compact, solar-powered gadget is pretty good, too.

The only reservation we have about Solavore's design, outside of not actually having tested it hands on, is its shape. It surely won't be an issue if you're traveling in one of the massive, hydraulically-expanded expedition vehicles we saw at the show, but if you're camping with a more compact SUV or car, that package might be hard to wrestle inside with all your other camping gear and fellow campers. Spending a week on the road, I was tempted several times to throw my Weber Smokey Joe charcoal grill away for this very reason. The kettle grill is compact, but it's an awkward fit inside a crowded cargo area. The tilted trapezoidal shape of the Solavore Sport might prove similarly awkward.

Then again, the Solavore Sport doesn't require a bag of charcoal or propane tank to use, and could probably store other things during transport. So maybe it wouldn't be that hard to squeeze in. It really depends upon what you're driving and what else you're hauling.

The Solavore Sport retails for US$229.50, which includes the two 9-in 3-qt pots. The aluminum reflector is available separately for $39.50. Solavore makes its hardware in the US.

read online here

Solavore Launch Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 11, 2015

SOLAVORE LAUNCHES SOLAR OVEN WITH A MISSION


Solavore Sport Promotes Clean-Cooking Technology Around the World

(Austin, Texas) – Solavore, LLC announces the launch of the Solavore™ Sport solar oven, promoting clean-cooking technology around the world. Via profits from the sale of the Sport, Solavore aims to empower women through “caring capitalism.Solavore is a women-owned business, founded by CEO Anne Patterson, who took over production of the well-respected Solar Oven Society’s (SOS) ovens in 2015. Founded in 1995 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, SOS originally developed Solavore’s flagship product, the Sport solar oven, the industry leader in price, performance, family-size capacity and rugged durability. After years of cooking in her prized SOS oven, Patterson resumed production of the Sport, with the same technology and mission in mind. 

Solavore is built on the belief that cooking fuels should be healthy and as abundant as sunlight. Solavore pledges to use profits from the Sport to provide healthy cooking fuel alternatives to wood, charcoal, kerosene and coal for women in sun-rich countries like Afghanistan, Sub-Saharan Africa, India and Central America. In doing so, Solavore is reducing deforestation and carbon emissions and empowering women by providing a free cooking fuel and small-business incubation.

With all components of the solar oven proudly made in the United States, the Solavore Sport was purpose-built by solar-cooking engineers for maximum efficiency, durability, and ease of use. At just nine pounds and with sunshine as the only fuel required for cooking, the oven is easy for anyone to use and extremely portable. With its rectangular shape and low center of gravity, the Sport is one of the only solar ovens large enough to hold two pots and be physically stable against high winds and rambunctious children. One-inch rigid foam insulation keeps the heat inside while the exterior of the oven gets warm – not hot - to the touch, making it family friendly.

Most dishes that can be baked in a conventional oven or simmered on the stovetop can be cooked in a Sport solar oven. Slow cooker recipes are fantastic in the Sport, including rice, soups and slow-roasted meats such as pulled pork. The Sport yields consistent results with breads, cookies and cakes with no recipe adjustments required. The Sport can lower energy bills in the summer months when substituted for a standard oven, allowing for savings both on cooking energy and air-conditioning. The Sport is perfect for on-the-go lifestyles — bring it on your camping trip and enjoy hiking or fishing while dinner is slow-cooking unattended. No open fires (or firewood restrictions). 

The Sport retails for $229.50 for one oven with optional, detachable aluminum reflector sets available for $39.50 each. The aluminum reflectors extend the solar cooking range and allow cooking year-round — even up north, far from the Sun Belt. The “Double Stuff,” two ovens (stackability means two can be shipped as easily as one), sells for $485.50 and includes two detachable aluminum reflectors. Order two (for a second home, a neighbor, your child's school) and Solavore will pass the cost savings on to you. 

The Sport is currently for sale in Solavore’s online shop: http://www.solavore.com/shop/.

ABOUT: Solavore is a women-owned manufacturer of solar ovens whose mission is to promote clean-cooking technology around the world. The Solavore Sport oven was purpose-built by solar-cooking experts for maximum efficiency, durability and ease of use. The name “Solavore” rhymes with “locavore” and has a similar meaning: while a locavore is one who eats locally-grown food, a Solavore “eats of the sun”. Solavore pledges to use profits to remain independent and self-sustaining while providing clean-cooking alternatives to the world’s 4 billion people who are still cooking over open fires.

For further information please visit www.solavore.com. Follow them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/solavore and follow them on Instagram and Twitter @Solavore.

***

MEDIA CONTACT: 

Stef Shapira                
Perennial Public Relations 
281.748.9474 
[email protected] 

Melissa Grady
Perennial Public Relations
540.219.4999
[email protected]