Development of Prince-40 Solar Concentrator As Do It Yourself (DIY) Kit
Abstract
Climate change issues and depletion of fossil fuels have forced civilized world to look for clean and green energy alternatives. Cooking is one of the most basic application area which consume large amount of fuels. Asian and African countries are blessed with ample Sun and Switching over to 'Solar Cooking', can help to resolve the issues to some extent. In India community cooking is practiced on large scale at mid- day- meal schemes in schools, Aanganwadis (Pregnant women, mothers and child care center), old age homes, temples, aashrams and charitable organizations. It is possible to shift many such institutions on community solar cooking and save lot of fossil fuels and firewood. In recent years development of community dish cookers like SK-23 and PRINCE-40 have shown great potential in energy saving and mass deployment of technology. Adoption of 360 nos. of SK-23 solar community dish cookers for residential tribal schools by tribal ministry in Maharashtra, 42 PRINCE-40 community dish cookers by 'Catholic Relief Society' in Madhyapradesh and Chattisgarh and 2 systems by WOTR (Watershed Organisation TRust) in Maharashtra for mid-day-meal scheme at schools has shown viability and acceptance by rural and tribal communities. These pro}ects show huge potentia for large scale deployment in Asian and African continent. PRINCE-40 concentrator in fabricated version is upgradation from SK-23, on account of transportability and performence. In recent months PRINCE-40 design has been further improvised from fabricated dish to segmented dish, constructed in FRP. Applications of PRINCE-40 concentrators are now extended to autoclaving and microenterprise, apart from community cooking. These PRINCE-40 concentrators of 4 m2 aperture area fill the gap between domestic cookers of 1. m2 and Scheffler dishes of 16 m2.