Changes: NeoLoco

Revision as of 23:37, 10 February 2021

Last edited: 10 February 2021

NeoLoco is a bakery in Normandy, France, offering local solar roasted seeds and baked goods. The founder is Arnaud Crétot, who has traveled the planet to study various existing energy solutions. He first worked with the association Les vagabonds de l'énergie, which he co-founded in 2009, and then with Solar Fire Concentration, a Finnish social enterprise. In 2018 he decided to install a solar array concentrator oven in Normandy.

In 2014, Arnaud became technical director of Solar Fire Concentration, and participated in the development of solar concentrators, in order to support artisanal activity in southern countries, such as Kenya and Tanzania.

Obviously, a solar bakery is dependent on weather conditions, especially in a region as northern as Normandy, where the sun often plays hide and seek with the clouds. But Arnaud explains; "there are ways to adapt to the weather of the day" , confides Arnaud Crétot. “If the sun is out at 10:30 am, I heat my oven and put my pasta in the oven at 11 am or 12 noon. But if it's there 8 a.m. or 9 a.m., I'll add more mass to the oven in the form of 1 kg terracotta tiles to store the useful three hours of sunshine in the morning, which gives me great flexibility to the rest of the day. Then I can do batches almost every hour. "