Precident For Marketing Solar Ovens

Persons Helping People (PHP) is non-profit corporation
based in St. Paul, MN, whose mission is to help alleviate
hunger in developing countries. Their primary product is a prototype solar
cooker.

As part of their effort they hired a marketing consultant for market strategies and recommendations: Spirit West.

Spirit West Management evaluated PHP’s current marketing strategy
based on at material cost of $20. Each unit utilizes sixty-five, 20-ounce
recycled plastic soft drink bottles and a salvaged aluminum
printing plate. Spirit West Management, Inc., points to better results
being likely in the international market.

"There is often initial resistance for using solar
ovens in developing countries because it changes the way
people cook their food. This initial resistance may be
overcome with basic awareness training on issues such as
air quality, inaccessibility and cost of fuel, and water
pasteurization."

Our design would have a much lower cost of training in that it does not significantly change the way people cook their food.

Problem Statement

Currently the status quo method for cooking in Tibet contributes to environmental destruction, health problems and requires time consuming fuel collection. There is a need for a clean, renewable and cheap way to cook food which fits in with the current routine of users.

Poblem Statement Mind Map

Parts of a Business plan

High Altitude Cooking

The Tibetan plateau has and average altitude of 14,763 ft, anything above 3000 feet is considered high altitude cooking. Altitude seems to create a number of complicating factors in cooking which wee need to think about:

- The boiling point of water is 188.07 °F or 86.71 °C at approx 15,000 ft or 4572 m above sea level, verses 212°F or 100°C at sea level. This means water and other liquids evaporate faster and boil at lower temperatures

- Leavening gases in breads and cakes expand more.

- Foods prepared by boiling cook at a lower temperature, and take longer to cook. Cooking time increases. Turning up heat does not help things cook faster. Water cannot exceed its own boiling point — unless if using a pressure cooker.

- Covering food while cooking can help keep things from drying out.

- Because of the longer cooking times and increased evaporation it is very easy to dry out meat while cooking. pressure cooking may be a possible solution.

- Heavy cookware with tight fitting lids can be very helpful in cooking under these conditions.

- Slow cooking simmers at a lower temperature, making it more difficult for the food to reach a safe temperature and for bacteria to be destroyed. A safe temperature of at least 160 °F needs to be reached.

Summary of " Performance and testing of a hot box storage solar cooker"

The general thrust of this article is that it is possible to cook into the evening using a solar cooker that has a used motor oil storage component as part of its design. The storage unit basically consists of a sealed volume of motor oil that sits in the bottom of the cooker. Adding this unit does not significantly affect the cooking temp during the hours of direct sunlight. The solar cooker with storage component was 23C higher than without from 1700 to 2400 h. Cooking trials seemed to indicate that the evening meal could be fully cooked between 1730 h and 2000 h using storage. I see this storage device as a potential add on and improvement which could be purchased by families as an incremental improvement to the product. alternatively this storage unit could be as simple as a sealed standard sized tin can around which the stove has been designed.

Summary of "PARAMETRIC STUDY OF A BOX-TYPE SOLAR COOKER"

A number of parameters can be constrained for the design of our solar cooker using the information in this paper.

1. There is a significant difference in the internal temp of the cooker as the fiber glass insulation thickness is increased up to around 60mm after which the improvement in performance seems to be negligible.

2. The optimum number of reflective panels is two when those panels are angled at 120 and 60 degrees for summer and winter respectively.

3. Considerable improvement in the cooker performance is attained when the cooking pot diameter is increased. The best performance improvement is obtained when the ratio of the pot diameter and the cooker width is equal to unity that is to say that best performance is reached when the pot is as large as will fit in the cooker box. Cooking pot depth seems to be a negligible variable.

Solar Group Overall Approach

We chose to develop our service based upon existing models and products. Our approach does not reinvent the wheel, it does however add speed, stability, and practicality to existing models used around the world.

We chose a four pronged approach along the lines of creating a brand, developing the product, using existing distribution models, and expanding the venture through franchise.

Brand:
A brand is a promise. Our promises are:
1. This solar cooker will save you time
2. This solar cooker will not burn your house down.

We have determined that although other promises or objectives merit inclusion, by keeping the message of our venture simple, we can build the brand to later include other promises such as reducing indoor air pollution, or heating a home.

Marketing:
The marketing portion of our solution includes considerations of how to best reach populations with very little available time to experiment and modify their lives. We have also considered how to best communicate our brand within the focuses of practicality of the product offered as well as remaining true to the social constraints of our user group.

Product:
Our product seeks to incorporate solar cooking into the routine of the home, as well as to save time and energy that would previously be spent cooking with biomass. We have also considered how to best design a solar cooker that will not burn your house down.

Distribution:
Our distribution model builds upon existing modes, where uncommon resources reach users that live outside of cities or regional towns. We would use our franchise network to connect smaller regional towns to the cities or manufacturing center headquarters.

Franchise:
The most important part of our system or solution is our proposed franchise network, where we will train "sales people" from the cities to spread and sell the technology to the potential users. Those sales people will then have the opportunity to expand the franchise to other entrepreneurial people that they meet along the way.

Why we are not giving this technology away for free:

1. People discard free items, when you price a piece of technology, people ascribe more value to that product than they would if it is community owned or donated by a random NGO.
2. By creating value through price, we are opening opportunities to experiment with new or innovative business models that potentially sustain the enterprise.
3. Franchise creates a local economy where we may enable the empowerment of our user group. Our franchise may eventually serve as a model for increased development by our user groups.

Response to to "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid"

The case studies discussed here really show that it is possible to develop a business model that first looks at the need that is out there and works toward a business model that can work to reach a sustainable price point for their project. The Jaipur Foot really stands out to me as the best example of this, their administrative cost is at 4%, and COGS is 90%! An amazingly lean business, that would make any traditional business owner jealous. The difference is that that a traditional business owner would then look to see how high the price could be set to maximize profit. Jaipur Foot is plowing their profit back into their business to make the product and service better and reduce the price, and to make it more accessible.

Response to " The Power of Unreasonable People"

The author tells us about Bunker Roy and the Barefoot Colleges based in Rajastan. Central to their success is an open and transparent structure that puts people's fate in their own hands. It seems to me as we get further and further into our project that the real challenge will be in designing a thing or a process that enables the project to be in the hands of the people running it. Their knowledge and benefit from its continued operation has to be there.

The real gap that I see social entrepreneurship filling is in the type 2 model . A traditional business will always be seeking to maximize profit and any other considerations are subservient to that. A type 2 model has the freedom to form a business that seeks to succeed so that it can achieve its other goals which can be providing something other than a maximized profit as the end goal. At the center of any of these successes is always something resembling a sustainable business model.

It is also interesting to hear the founders of these socially driven businesses say that their companies first asset were their people. The people who make up the core team are what venture capitalists tend to look for first in determining the potential success of a new venture, yet it isn't what seems to be the stated focus of most businesses. It's very interesting to hear these social entrepreneurs and venture capitalists say similar things about this element of success.

Solar Group Mind Map

Mind map of the problems, issues and opportunities for our solar solutions to consider.

Solar Group Ideation Sketches

On Thursday we divided up into groups addressing different issues. I joined the solar group along with Peter Simon and Cassie Mauer . On Saturday we met and developed three general areas to focus on; home heating and heat storage, Cooking, and bio design using aquaponics or green houses.

The Possibilities of Aquaponics

At first look it may seem that an area that is extremely dry like Western China would not be a place to ever try a method of farming called Aquapnics, but the reality is that if done properly it uses 80 to 90 percent less water than traditional growing methods.

Here are a couple of links on the method from people who know more about it than me

re-nest aquaponics

ny times aquaponics article

Three Areas of Social Need:

1. Increased bike use - There is a wide array of other disparate societal problems facing the world that are solved by biking.

They generally fall into three broad categories: Transportation, Health, and the Environment. From a transportation perspective the amount of road space used by a single person on a bike is significantly less than a person in a car, the impact on cost of road maintenance and construction due to a bikes lower weight is significant. Bikes unlike cars are not separated from the driving environment and result in a much more personal traffic interaction. Biking also satisfies these basic transportation needs at the same time that it provides exercise. People actually drive to a gym to workout then drive home, an insane proposition when compared to biking for exercise and transportation. America has serious obesity problems which could be greatly reduced by widespread biking. Biking is also largely a carbon neutral form of transportation, especially when compared to the alternatives of using a motorized vehicle. Our dependence upon foreign oil supplies and the entire host of geopolitical issues that go along with that dependence could be greatly reduced if not eliminated by widespread biking.

2. Global Climate Change and Renewable Energy:
The greatest challenge facing our generation is the way in which we will come up with solutions to the myraid problems that global climate change will cause. Any solution that can prevent more CO2 from entering the atmosphere needs to be implemented now because the effects climate change is having not just on the natural world but also upon an enormous portion of the population are disastrous. Bangladesh will basically disappear with sea level rise. Think of the geo-political ramifications of an entire country of refugees. Multiply that on a global scale and it is a monumental problem worsening almost all other current areas of social need.

3. Improved Food Knowledge:
We are faced with rapidly increasing childhood obesity, poor diet, and lack of exercise which causes over 30o thousand deaths each year. Obesity is estimated to cost society nearly $100 billion a year. These are crazy numbers. Think what could be done with 100 billion in health care spending. For me I feel that a lot of this problem is rooted in a decline in cooking of good, simple food at home and a transition, especially among the poor, to heavily processed and packaged food. It seems that many families are not taught how to make food from the standard unprocessed ingredients at the grocery store. I personally love to cook and see an enormous potential for educating people on ways to make low cost healthy food for their family that can be a key to escaping the cycle of poverty.

Here are some local Providence, RI area organizations working on these issues.

1. Woonasquatucket River Watershed Council

2 Recycle-a-bike

3. Farm Fresh Rhode Island

Design Ideation for Helping Western Chinese Communities

These sketches are the product of brainstorming possible solutions to challenges faced in everyday survival for Himalayan communities in Western China. I was specifically concerned with solutions that could improve the quality of life in these communities by using materials that would be readily available and low cost. Specific areas I tried to tackle with these solutions included the construction of solar collectors, improving insulation, generating electricity, and improving stove design.