On the way back to town from the dentist in Cornwall this afternoon we spotted a new shop, Natural Power Solar Products, in the plaza across from the post office. Curiousity got the best of of us, and we popped over for a look.
Inside we found owner Shirley Han, and an array of solar things, the most prominent of which, on display in the middle of the shop, was a portable solar kitchen — Kitchen of Wonderland reads the brochure:
It’s an intriguing product, one that brought back memories of trying to build a solar-powered bread oven at reboot in 2009. They have a large unit in stock, with smaller ones on the way; pricing seems to be in the $300-$600 range, although that needs to be worked out once everything is through customs.
It’s hard not to fall for the infectious bravado of the brochure – “This creation may be greater than Steve Jobs’s iphone” – especially if the reported 3-6 minutes for popcorn popping is accurate. I’ve encouraged them, once the warmer months arrive, to attract customers by setting up a unit in the parking lot: there’s steady traffic from the grocery store next door.
In addition to solar kitchens, they also sell “power banks” that you can charge from a solar panel or from the mains that you can then use to power a mobile phone or tablet, and there’s a larger array of solar products en route from China as we speak, due to arrive soon.
We’ve been beneficiaries of new restaurants and grocery stores in the Charlottetown area from the wave of Asian immigration over the last decade; it’s great to see new initiatives like this that fall outside the food realm.
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I am Peter Rukavina and this is my blog. I am a writer, letterpress printer, and a curious person.
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Comments
Solar power is taking off
Solar power is taking off exponentially in China and the economies of scale are going to have worldwide effects. China has gone from 800MW to 43GW of photo-voltaic capacity in the past five years exceeding targets several-fold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China
The claim "even on cloudy
The claim "even on cloudy days" I can't believe. This reminds me of the things advertised in comic books with fabulous claims and pictures that turned out deceptive when they arrived 6-8 weeks later in the mail. Still, I don't doubt it'll cook things in the sun, and I'd love to see what the results are like. I think if you cook meat as the pictures suggest you can, I think you could easily get yourself into trouble, in particular if it weren't very sunny and it were U.S. factory farm meat.
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