Deployable solar cooker

Ideas for a portable, deployable solar cooker

So, we have a working solar cooker (more about this on these posts), and we hope that with a couple of adjustments we will speedily boil water to our hearts content using free, renewable energy (sun permitting). Great!

I'm not quite happy with it though. It's a hefty thing, and doesn't exactly fold away for easy transportation. I'd like to improve the design to make a cooker that's far more portable, that's easy to deploy and adjust to the sun, and that (ideally) I can take to a music festival with my friends eD and Andy.

eD and Andy, however, are towing a tipi to this festival by bicycle. Yes; that means towing a tipi and a solar cooker by bicycle over roughly 5o miles of Somerset's gently sloping roads. You might say we can't do it. We can! You can read more about eD's debatable ideas here

For the deployable solar cooker, I'm thinking of using an umbrella, like so:

Click on the image to see a larger version; note the whistling kettle

I plan to reinforce two of the umbrella arms, such that the central strut (handle) and the two arms make a three point stand. The central strut can be used to orientate the cooker directly at the sun, by adjusting until there is no shadow falling from the strut onto the umbrella. We will also make an integral kettle stand.

The inside of the umbrella needs to be as smooth and reflective as possible. One idea is to adapt a survival blanket:

This happy chap can be found at OutdoorScotland.co.uk

Attaching the survival blanket to the inside of an umbrella such that it deploys with a smooth, sunlight-focusing finish is going to be somewhat of a challenge, so the thinking caps are still firmly in place. I'll probably write again when ideas develop....

This design is interactive - please feel free to either make it yourself or suggest design-changes for us to incorporate (using the 'comments'....)