-- HOME --

The cooker presented here is designed primarily for cooking food in sunny areas where traditional energy resources are scarce.
It is fitted with ceramic heating elements, whose flexibility of operation makes them ideal for use with variations in solar energy. The resistors are connected directly to the photovoltaic panel, with no need for batteries or electronic power regulation.

You are now on the home page, which provides a brief overview of all the documents available, which you can access from the general summary above.

presentation of the cooker
This is a general presentation: characteristics, specific features, purpose, use and performance of the cooker, as well as a video presentation.

Design of the cooker
More specifically, the PTC ceramic heating elements and their impact on the cooker in terms of electrical, thermal, economic and ergonomic aspects...

1 - Construction and use of a cooker
This section brings together the instructions needed for a cooker to be built by a craftsman close to the users, and the instructions for its day-to-day operation.

2 - Building a cooker : Appendices
This section contains additional information to make the construction of a cooker accessible to a careful non-professional.

3 - Theoretical presentations
LThe coupling of PTC ceramic resistors with one or more photovoltaic solar panels has been the subject of theoretical documents in the form of videos and articles.

4 - Technical information
This section contains technical information on PTC resistors and electricity, for advanced users or specifiers of photovoltaic cookers.

5 - Photovoltaic panel supports.
After a brief explanation of the advantages of orientable photovoltaic panels, the reader will find here three detailed drawings of orientable photovoltaic panel supports.

6 - Automation of ceramic resistors
One of the advantages of ceramic heating elements is that they allow the cooker to be operated manually, but they can be used for much more than just cooking, for example to supply domestic hot water, or for inter-seasonal storage for heating. In this case, it is preferable to automate the permanent adjustment of the number of ceramics in the light of variations in the solar energy available.
This 6th part proposes a detailed plan for a very rustic automatic board, based on an Arduino micro-controller, including the computer programme.
This part is currently being written.

7- Photovoltaic solar water heater
This section contains the detailed plans for an operational model of a water heater that can be used, for example, to heat water for a swimming pool or other purpose. This section is currently being drafted.

8 - Library
The library is intended to receive various documents as the cooker's avatars evolve ("avatar: metamorphosis, transformation" according to the Petit Robert). The four sections currently available cover the following subjects:
- a charger for telephones and 'USB' lamps, to complement the cooker,
- cooking and heating,
- photovoltaic collectors,
- electric batteries.

September 2020.
Last rewrite: March 2024