John Grandinetti's Indirect Solar Cooker
Mr. Grandinetti's oven can be made for about $21 dollars and here's the kicker: he is giving it away. He doesn't want to sell the plans, he wants a company to take it and mass produce it for third world countries so that forests won't need to be cut down for things like cooking fires. A noble idea indeed. It will be interesting to see if any company, anywhere steps up and takes him up on his offer.
John Grandinetti is a solar contractor out of Honolulu, and the owner of Grand Solar Inc. This isn't his first foray into the solar cooking/pasteurization field. He also has created similar devices for the purpose of pasteurizing water in the late 90's for third world installations in Tanzania and Guatemala.
This is an Indirect Cooker.
According to SolarCooking.org:
Indirect cookers separate the solar energy collection element from the cooking area, using a heat transport medium to bring the collected energy into the cooking area. Hypothetically a solar collector could be placed several feet away from the cooking area by using this technique. This would allow the collection elements to be placed on the roof, for example, with the cooking area located within the home.
SolarCooking.org also says:
In 2008 John Grandinetti publicized his Evacuated Tube Indirect Solar Cooker, which has some similarities to the Whiller indirect solar cooker. Grandinetti's design replaces the finned pipe with an evacuated tube solar collector as the collector element, and uses vegetable oil instead of water as the heat transport medium. With these changes and some other refinements, the design provides a practical solar appliance. Tests have indicated the unit can reach cooking temperatures (300°F) with 1 hour of morning sun at tropical latitudes. Cooking, water pasteurization and autoclaving can be readily achieved throughout the remainder of the solar day, with cooking times similar to an electric stove. Frying, baking, boiling and steaming have all been successfully accomplished.
Other related links
http://www.developingworldsolar.org/
http://www.safewatersystems.com/solar_water_pasteurizers