Dar Curtis with a HotPot solar cooker
Dar Curtis is the chairman of Solar Household Energy (SHE) He began a study of solar cooking in 1989. By 1991, he had learned that this simple technology had enormous potential for our planet where environmental degradation was causing ever greater concern. The use of biomass for cooking in hundreds of millions of households around the world was already unsustainable. The perpetual increase in population guaranteed the situation could only continue to worsen. He noted that “people are much better at growing people than they are at growing trees.”
Given the urgency of need for cheap and renewable household energy, Dar proposed a new solar cooker capable of mass production which combined durability, efficiency, and low cost. He partnered with Louise Meyer who had conducted solar cooking programs in Africa. Based on her field experience, the requirements for such a solar cooker were elaborated to include numerous considerations like portability, simplicity, and allure. Scientists and engineers at the Florida Solar Energy Center accepted the challenge and produced designs for an elegant cooker with only four components. It is called the HotPot.
Louise and Dar founded Solar Household Energy, Inc. in 1998 to induce private sector interest in merchandizing solar cookers on a massive scale in the developing world. SHE, Inc. partnered with the Mexican Fondo Mexicano Para La Conservación de la Naturaleza which arranged for the mass production of the HotPot and its marketing in Mexico. SHE has a small staff which is arranging the introduction of solar cooking in Africa and Latin America.