People frequently ask if solar cookers might not be a viable solutions for poor people around the world who must depend on collecting wood or purchasing charcoal for their daily fuel. Maybe it’s the allure of photo-voltaics or solar panels in the industrialized north that spurs this type of question, but the fact remains that solar cookers do not work as reliable substitutes for traditional or improved biomass.
That’s in part because rural inhabitants in developing countries are often small plot farmers who must get up when it’s still dark out to get things going on the farm. Breakfast, the key meal of the day if you’re a farmers, is impossible to prepare before sunrise using a solar cooker.
The working urban poor have a different problem. If a family is out all day and don’t return until after dark, how can they prepare dinner? Also, where can you safely leave your solar cooker with food cooking when you live in a shanty town?
“Why are solar cookers still unpopular among development experts?” is the title of a 2009 study that explores some of these questions.
Here’s the abstract of the article published in the Journal of Engineering Science and Technology:
The household energy problem in countries of the South remains critical. Solar cookers can contribute to a solution; however, their potential is seldom realized by the academic and political world. By contrast, bio-energy as a replacement for fossil fuels is increasingly popular in Europe. With regard to tropical developing countries, this European enthusiasm implies unrealistic views about the renewability of woody biomass in drylands under conditions of climate change and increasing population pressure. Another reason of error is a too narrow concept of modernization of energy supplies, neglecting affordable cooking energies and focusing nearly exclusively on electricity. Cheap solar cooking appliances with a low thermal output are useful in extreme situations like refugee camps to allow survival of large numbers of individuals or mini-groups. Under normal circumstances families need appliances which can cope with the volume of staple food needed, that is the number of people times about 1 litre/person/day.
Hat tip to IAP Updates for pointing us to this study!
English 
French 