"To help feed the country’s population, an inventor, Toufic Hamdan, created a commercial bakery to bake bread in solar ovens. The startup “Partners With Sun” has installed a solar convection oven on the bakery’s roof. The Solar Oven uses large silver mirrors to capture and magnify the sun’s rays to build heat. The heat is transported by a transfer fluid which is then used to help operate a convection oven, allowing it to reach a baking temperature of between 300 and 400 Celsius. The heat is used directly in food and beverage production. " Baking Bread in a Solar Oven | Happy Eco News
According to the company website, “The Solar Oven cuts up to 80% of the bakery’s fuel bill.”
This is a really interesting idea, however, it would be good to see how efficient it is. I would think going from light>mirrors>liquid>oven>bread is less efficient than going from light>solar panel>oven>bread.
Either way, this is a creative design, and could be used for other applications. Could a house be heated in the same way?
Photovoltaic solar panels have quite poor efficiency, ~20% in good operating conditions. I wouldn’t be surprised that the light>mirrors>liquid>oven>bread solution has a superior efficiency.
How well does it operate during sub-optimal conditions? Electricity can be stored in a battery, so you can spread your power out over time. I would expect some flexibility in this, since heat doesn’t instantly dissipate, but if conditions remain poor for an extended period, I would think this would be much less resilient.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. It would be great to see some numbers for this.
The tech. has been around since the 70s and used for heating and hot water also.
radiant hot water heating is a thing, industrial compost pipes often has heat transfer tubing in it for free heat and hot water.