Why heat storage for cooking?

The obvious answer is that we would like to cook where and when we want (on a heat storage), instead of being limited to outside cooking whenever there is sunshine (direct cooker).

Heat storage for cooking	Direct cooker	SK14 picture

Motivation for heat storage:  Off-sun cooking

Off-sun periods, when the sunshine is not available, have typically two time scales. One is a short time scale, where clouds come and go, and the other is the day/night time scale.

• Heat storage as energy buffer
  For the short time scale, a heat storage can serve as a buffer. If the solar system has sufficient power for cooking during sunshine, a heat storage can act as a buffer to store excess energy and provide energy back  to the cooker during the short term off-sun periods. The storage may in this case not need to be of large capacity.
• Heat storage for cooking at evening time
  A heat storage can accumulate energy during the day time sun shine hours, and make it available for cooking in the evening. The storage must now have capacity to cook complete meals.

Motivation for heat storage:  Convert low power energy source to high power cooking needs

A low power energy collector (small heat collector, small Photo Voltaic panel or small wind/hydro generator) may be impractical for cooking - with long waiting times for boiling. However, even a small energy collector can during the day accumulate sufficient energy for cooking a meal in the evening. If the storage has high temperatures, the cooking power delivered to the the cooker will also be high. A heat storage can thus convert a low power source to a high power cooking application.

Motivation for heat storage:  Energy flexibility

If a heat storage can be designed to accept energy from different types of sources, if becomes more robust against the intermittency of the sources, e.g. a wind generator can charge a heat storage when the wind blows also during the night.