Solar powered cooker and energy generator costing $13 by One Earth Designs

One Earth Designs, a U.S. based company came up with a cheap and affordable way to cook and produce a bit of electricity, using solar energy. Winning a €500,000 ($667,000) environmental prize for this, the company developed an umbrella-shaped contraption made of yak wool and a cheap Chinese insulation fabric that boasts a supremely high reflectivity to focus the sun’s rays and generate about 11 watts of power, weighing just 6 kilograms (13 pounds). The cooker and electricity generator combination costs about €10 ($13) and can last a whole 12 years! Designed by students from MIT, Harvard and Tsinghua universities, the money won at the competition, the Green Challenge, will be used for scale production of the system.

This might just help bring some electricity and a sustainable way to cook food to far flung areas, disconnected from the grid.

[CanadianPress]