Design, development and testing of a small scale hybrid solar cooker

A Small Scale Box type solar cooker (SSB) weighing 4.8 kg is modified into a novel photovoltaic and thermal hybrid solar cooker named as Small Scale Box type Hybrid solar cooker (SSBH) weighing 6.5 kg. Five solar panels each of 15 W are attached with this cooker. Cooking time is reduced due to the photovoltaic power generated by solar panels along with the solar thermal power. Any time cooking facility makes it a user friendly cooker. The design features of this hybrid solar cooker include proper sizing of solar photovoltaic panels, battery and dc heaters. The performance and costing of the cooker is compared with a baseline Solar Box type Cooker (SBC) weighing 12.3 kg. Efficiency of Improved Small Scale Box type Hybrid solar cooker (ISSBH) is 38%. Estimated cost ($120) of the developed solar cooker can be further reduced upon commercialization to make it more affordable and popular. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.