Using Solar Energy For Cooking - Case study - Auroville

Auroville is an experimental township composed with clusters of properties about approx. 12 km from north of pondicherry, India. In this township you will get to see different style of architecture most of structures are in local vernacular style in a minimalist architecture. solar kitchen is one such building which captures your attention to look at large solar bowl.

Its a community kitchen but famously known to be solar kitchen with large solar concentrator on its roof to trap solar energy for cooking meals 3 times a day for 1000 people.

The building is designed is with appropriate building material and technology and waste water recycling. The planning of building is done in such a way that its longer facade orientation toward north south which creates wind incidence of 45 degree to prevailing used direction causing a border wind shadow, resulting in negative pressure which creates higher indoor wind velocity. Adequate roof insulation, through the use of broken bricks mixed with lime and sand on top of the 10 meter free span ferrocement roof channels, is the most cost effective way to save energy. And all pillars and walls are in Eco friendly material compressed earth blocks which cement stabilized. The building air circulation is increased through ventilation chimneys, which serve also as deep light wells. A small water body on the east side of the building, in the direct path of the wind direction, is provided.

Solar chimney to remove hot air from kitchen. The main renewable feature of building solar bowl is positioned at western end of first floor. Its total of 96 prefabricated ferrocement elements are cast and hoisted in place to form a perfect fixed spherical bowl.

The working detail of solar bowl: Research led to the optimum size (15x15cm) for the 11.000 hand cut flat facets with ordinary 3mm mirror glass. Each single mirror piece had to be hand placed with an accuracy of 5 to 10 arc minutes, achieved with a simple laser pointer placed at the centre of the sphere. A tilted fixed mast supports a moving receiver which can rotate in all directions around a double-axis articulation placed at the centre of the sphere and balanced by a counterweight. A computer programme ensures the automatic tracking of the whole system with scope for seasonal changes. The solar bowl had also to be hybridized with a conventional diesel fired boiler back-up system for cooking on an off-on basis. The interface is through a heat storage tank using thermic fluid storage (1.4 m3) with one-hour heat storage capacity. Possible future replicability for community cooking, power generation, desalinization and cold storage have been kept in mind.