Freedom fuel

Pune entrepreneur experiments with cooking devices powered by solar and biomass to beat rising LPG prices

- HIMANSHU N

IN THE past four years, Vishakha Chandhere has spawned a quiet revolution of sorts from her city of Pune to beat the rising prices of cooking gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). Every day, while preparing a lunch of dal, rice and vegetables for her family, she measures the ingredients, finds the perfect ratio of spices and mixes them in a steel vessel. But instead of turning to an LPG stove, Chandhere carries the vessels up to the roof to place it in one of her three solar cookers-the first has a parabolic reflector that heats the base; the second one is an insulated box with light reflected mirrors on the base and the and in the third cooker, food is placed inside a vacuum tube that concentrates light to generate heat.