Solar cooking or not ? (soon in French)
We stand for Artisans, SMEs and Communities
The solar cookers movement has existed since the ‘70. Solar cookers are great, most of them have free plans online, and solar energy is free and abundant. So why isn’t it spreading like a (solar) fire ? The answer is social, mixed with people’s habits and it is yet not so well adapted to most Global South’s cooking habits. Nowadays, people want what they see in the movies and on social networks. They want powerful devices and a nice kitchen, not a plan B. They have sadly been pitched for so long that they are not "developed’’ enough, so that most of them want the "developed Western kitchen" from the movies and the Tiktok. And we can all see that this is not what’s happening, right ?
Meanwhile the sun shines and its free energy is underused. There are now several bigger solar cookers with a tube where the food fits in, or a system with a huge parabolic shape. They are great in the West but in the Global South, putting the food in a tube doesn’t work for big quantities, and the big complex parabolic shape do need engineers to be installed and maintained. First, of course, we thought that Lytefire would be "the" solution. And when it comes to cooking for many people, it can be with Lytefire Community Solar Cooker PRO with which you can cook and fry food, as well as boil water to purify it, product comes soon). Check here how Lytefire performs.
Crisis and disasters of all kinds are happening more and more, and, even with tons of connectivity, mega renewable plans, etc., we can see that the vulnerable populations still do not have a massive access to clean reliable energy. So we came up with the idea of a powerful oven reaching 300°C, simple enough to be maintained by its users, built locally and powerful enough to run a profitable activity. And that is the Lytefire PRO.
We have mostly focused on bread making but we have also developed other applications related to food transformation. Now the material and production cost price being still high for the most vulnerable ones, NGO’s are key clients in these contexts and our first partners to start in a country. And after that ? Well check the scale up strategy below.
Our Model
Real solutions must be scalable.
The environmental and social problems are severe and getting worse. Real solutions must be scalable.
How to scale is the heart of the problem. The first step for us is developing the expertise and algorithms for deep optimization of solar thermal technology for the actual context people are living in.
In some locations labour costs are high and lot’s of optimization is needed to reduce operating costs. In other places labour costs are low and skills and infrastructure are less developed ; and therefore optimization in these contexts means making technology that is much less automated and expensive, easy to deliver and install and can be maintained locally, and providing energy scales and temperatures that produce real value for a local business and entrepreneurs.
Return on one’s effort and investment is just as important in low-income areas as in high-income areas, and since prices are also low for products, there must be sufficient scale of production. All of our analysis starts and ends with Return on Investment for the client or end-user. Check the payback calculator and if you can repay for your investment and start saving money, then you should consider Lytefire.
Less-automation does not mean a technology must be less thermally-efficient or only have tiny production scales. An artisan baker in Kenya must bake as many goods as an artisan baker in France to stay in business. There is no real limit to the solar technology that can be made based on manual tracking (more here). However, designing such solutions requires the same engineering methods and code as we can use for high-precision development for industrial clients.
After optimizing Lytefire technology using state-of-the art numerical methods, CAD simulation and then testing it in real conditions in actual small business context (a step we have completed), the next step is to work with as many people and organizations as possible. It is our belief that solving global problems requires global (and fast) cooperation.
International NGO’s have a key role to introduce Lytefire among vulnerable populations and we train their staff (Training of Trainer) to our method so they can support youth and women’s cooperative start their solar bakery business for example. Everywhere it is possible, we identify serious local industrial manufacturers ready to produce and commercialize, and to them we bring our good reputation and marketing expertise, as well as a global users community that will spread the word. Licensees can allows us to spread horizontally in good cooperation spirit with local people who know their local markets better than we’ll ever do (SME’s, schools, NGO’s in their country, local associations). Once this is happening, Lytefire is visible in the society, people save money with it and protect their environment, it becomes desirable somehow. Then more local artisans can be trained in remote regions to non-CNC version in order to help the most vulnerable communities acquire their solar oven, they join training’s organized by NGO’s, etc. Make Lytefire local, desirable, accessible and maintainable by the people with you, that’s the goal. Join us !
