Grill Your Steaks with the Sun

Written by Jaymi Heimbuch

Friday, 01 August 2008

Some “green” gadgets are too hilarious to pass up posting about. I have some serious doubts that this thing would actually cook a meal worth eating. But I felt compelled to share this concept design, should you need a pick-me-up for your Friday. Or perhaps you’ll decide this is exactly how you’d like to spend your Saturday afternoon.

The solar dish focuses sunlight onto a solar receptor and the energy travels to the grilling platform, heating a coil that cooks your food. Strikingly like an electric stove top. If you don’t have enough sunlight, there’s a plug-in cord… I don’t know how effective this thing could actually be unless it is quite expensive, but figuring that most of us BBQ when the sun is out, it may be a concept worth putting together. At least it’s not yet another solar bag or backpack.

Anyway, it cracked me up. So, happy Friday.

Via Ecofriend, Tuvie

Comments (6)

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Clearly not efficient
written by Anthony Liekens , August 01, 2008

The dish is about the same size of the grill. The solar energy that can be collected is concentrated, sent around to a grill, and redistributed over the grill again. This process would give a high temperature at the collector of the dish, but once it is redistributed to the bigger surface of the grill, you'll have just as much as the solar energy coming from the dish. You could just as well put your steaks in the sun and wait for them to bake ...

...
written by Clinch , August 01, 2008

This just looks like someone stuck a satellite dish on the side of a barbecue.
And it looks overly complicated, considering most other solar cookers, and similar devices (even existing solar barbecues) are relatively simple.

Will be interesting to see how this compared to other solar barbecues.

@Clearly not efficient
written by Gruen , August 02, 2008

Your point about the efficiency is well taken, but I think you don't get the complete picture. What was missing from this photograph was the flexible gas coupling which supplies methane from a bucket sized fecal reactor.

Nice concept
written by MIster X , August 02, 2008

Looks like it may use a heat pipe in the solar cooking part to deliver thermal energy to the grill.
Nice idea, and a new use for an old technology.
I hope it's not too pricey.

Solar cooking is very feasible
written by ittanmomen , August 03, 2008

Please check http://solarcooking.org/ for information. I myself built a simple box cooker, that cooked baked beans and rice within one hour, and achieved 127 degrees.

This particular design may have the heat transfer as a weakness, but concentrating the sun certainly creates higher temperatures (making it more likely to burn food). A parabolic cooker needs to track the sun constantly, whereas box cookers don't need as much tracking.

Fun-Panel Solar Cooker
written by Teong Tan , August 14, 2008

You can make two Fun-Panel cardboard solar cookers in an hour from a single cardboard box and some aluminum foil. Fun-panel cooker can achieve temperature exceeding 130 degree C.
For detail construction plan, please visit www.freewebs.com/sunnycooker/funpanelcookerplan

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