This solar bowl in Auroville, India, is probably the best known and referred to solar bowl in the world. Conceptually it functions to initially harvest the sunshine via a large spherical, concave mirror and thereafter concentrate the sun’s rays on a boiler with water.

Essentially the design is that of a huge spherical dish 15m in diameter (which is similar but not exactly the same as a parabolic reflector) positioned on the ground. The inbound sunshine is captured and concentrated back upwards. At the focal point of the reflection is a cylindrical boiler. The boiler is designed to automatically track the position of the sun, thereby optimizing the reflection of the concentrated sunshine and consequent heat (a temperature of in excess of 300 °C can be generated), thereby heating the water internally and inducing and subsequent steam production.

This steam then drives the cooking process in the kitchen, with in excess of 2000 meals a day being achieved. In essence the bowl serves as a solar concentrator to harvest the solar energy from the sun. A detailed technical explanation accompanied with descriptive diagrams and photographs are available online.

Deepak Gadhia has developed what is reportably the world’s largest solar cooking system in Mt. Abu in Rajasthan in India. Here solar energy is also harvested and used on an industrial scale for cooking where over 30 000 meals a day are prepared and cooked. This solar capture concept is slightly different in that as opposed to one large concentrator, numerous parabolic reflectors are used collectively as a solar cooker. Here the collective parabolic principle is applied whereby Scheffler parabolic reflectors are used collectively to focus sunshine on a receiver to produce heat and steam to cook en masse.