Afghan Man Builds Parabolic Solar Stove

Text by Martin Chemhere

It’s amazing how an individual’s craft can lead to the transformation of an entire country.

For Ghulam Abbas, a blacksmith in Kabul, Afghanistan, a solar stove that he made from his humble home is now a marvel and a game changer for fellow citizens looking for cheaper and more efficient heating approaches.

The Kabul resident’s creative adventure has seen him building a cost-effective and environmentally friendly water heating option, that is a great replacement for households using fuel to cook.

Working from a workshop, he produced what is called parabola-shaped (bowl shaped) solar heaters. Since hitting the market, locals have been flocking to the workshop to purchase what is a solution to an energy challenge reportedly facing the country.

Using a modest design similar to a satellite dish, each mirror is stuck onto a curved frame that reproduces and concentrates sunlight onto a cooking pot or a metal sheet. A parabola is a curve formed by the intersection of a cone with a plane parallel to a straight line in its surface.

According to the blacksmith, it takes about 18 to 20 minutes to boil water on a large solar stove. Customers can take the smaller-sized models to distant places and this has made the products attractive and popular across Afghanistan.

As word-of-mouth spreads far and wide in Afghanistan, Abbas is appealing for support in the form of promotion of the product. Many locals do not have readily available coal and wood resources for home cooking and other household uses, making this technology great for many homes.

Parabola-shaped heaters have been around for over a century, as they were used in the 1870s by the French Foreign Legion to boil water and prepare their meals.

They are also in use in several Asian region countries like India and China.