The ‘Teaching Garden‘ on Governors Island is currently home to NYC’s largest solar cooking array. The array looks like it wants to be trailer hitched but it isn’t capable of that – but it does appear about the same length and width as a trailer, so you could imagine it being strapped to a flatbed for transportation purposes. It measures about 11′ long and 6’ wide, and includes 48 mirror panels that can be directed to reflect light from the sun onto a receiving panel, which in turn bounces the then-focused light (and thereby heat) onto the bottom of whatever pot or pan is being used.

The platform on which the pan sits is made of metal (presumably iron) and measures about 1’x2′, with a hole cut out for the pan to cover. This gives the array some flexibility as the sun moves through the sky slightly changing angles. (Perhaps the iron platform also warms up enough to allow cups of hot cocoa sitting on the platform to stay warm?)

Here are some additional photos with those details and other information:

The cooker design is a project of GoSol who also display an ‘oven’ design on their website. The specific unit I saw was built in conjunction with the Staten Island Makerspace over two years ago, which was recorded nicely by SILive’s Lauren Steussy and also documented in the video below:

GoSol claim the oven can reach temperatures of 600°F and the pot/pan cooker array is recorded up to at least 528°F – impressive! (Definitely capable of popcorn-popping goodness!)