RENEWABLE ENERGY   |  SOLAR COOKING STOVE

Mainstay Solar Cookers are the first solar cookers that are truly affordable to the world’s neediest. Elegant and deceptively simple looking, it is an affordable, effective and convenient solar cooker. With a few hours of sunshine, the cooker makes tasty meals for 5-6 people at gentle temperatures, cooking food and preserving nutrients without burning or drying out. Larger families use two or more cookers. The CooKit is made of a foil coated dish, shaped to reflect maximum sunlight onto a black cooking pot that converts sunlight into thermal (heat) energy.

BENEFITS

Addressing fuelwood scarcities: The solar cooker saves more than four times its value in fuelwood each year. With careful use and storage, it can be used for two years, reducing fuelwood consumption by two tonnes. It Reduces pressure on forests for firewood and charcoal.

Improving health: The solar cooker can pasteurize household drinking water, making it safe to drink. The solar cooking process is smokeless, reducing respiratory diseases and eye irritation. Solar cooked foods retain vitamins, nutrients and their natural flavors; there is no smoky taste; the foods cook slowly in their own juices. Nutritious, slow-cooking traditional foods (beans, root crops, and some grains) are restored to the family diet. Clean up is easy as the food never burns or sticks to the cooking pot.Solar cooks frequently report that the money they save on cooking fuel purchases is used to for many essentials, such as extra food, school supplies, and medical care.Without having to gather wood or dung, breathe smoke, and tend a fire – all associated with traditional cooking – solar cooking is easy and safe for people with AIDS and other illnesses, the elderly, disabled and young orphans.

Enhancing household and women’s economic status: The solar cooker repesents a new opportunity for women to capitalize on an underserved market and better meet their own cooking energy needs. Solar cooking saves time as there is less need to tend a fire or collect firewood. A person can cook while at work, at the market, or tending crops. Young girls can attend school instead of searching for fuelwood.Solar energy is free and abundant in many areas of Kenya, providing a safe, clean, healthy supplement to traditional fuels.