Hold out that ice-stick in the hot sun and it will melt away in a jiffy. But, with a little innovation, you can use the same energy from the sun to help keep your butterscotch and blackcurrant in a frozen state.
Auroville-based Sunlit Future, an integrated service provider bringing quality renewable energy solutions to both rural and urban India, has designed the prototype for a solar-powered ice cream cart.
Sunlit Future volunteers began tinkering with the idea about two years ago on assembling a DC deep freezer that could run on solar power. Among those who worked on the project they called Sunice were Rolland, Debo, Tejaswani and Prasun Shah.
It is not far-fetched to say that the necessity that mothered this invention was the frequent power cuts.
Why not design something that could give us cool ice cream on warm summer nights in spite of power cuts, the volunteers must have wondered.
From the drawing board to actual design, it took about two years as the team assembled a mobile cart from a German-make 166 litre DC refrigerator on solar power and an improvised tricycle with a solar panel for a roof.
“The initial idea was to develop a mobile vaccine storage vehicle that could deliver vaccines to the rural and remote areas. The same principle can be applied for a vaccine cart,” says Rishi, co-founder of Sunlit Future.
The biggest challenge was to make a mobile version of the refrigerator.
The first model of the tricycle chassis, fridge, solar panel and battery was too heavy to be lugged around. The team led by Rolland went about redesigning the model, using more of aluminium and reworking the gear ratio.
“In hindsight, the tricycle chassis wasn’t such a good idea as we ended up redoing almost 80 per cent of the chassis,” says Mr. Rishi.
About two months back, the prototype emerged successfully out of tests which established that the cart once powered during the day could keep ice cream fresh and frozen overnight and beyond.
Tourism potential
The cart could maintain autonomy with a temperature between minus 10 and minus 20 degrees for up to 48 hours once it was charged up during the day, said Om, volunteer at Sunlit Future.
Sunice is now being put to effective use at Roma’s Kitchen in Auroville. The cart is also being made available for schools and for functions within the Auroville community. The team at Sunlit Future believes that the prototype has the potential to go mainstream.
“For instance, a beachside with these solar ice cream carts would be a great idea for tourism,” suggests Divya Kapoor at Sunlit Future.
For Sunlit Future, which is engaged in providing life-changing interventions such as providing solar water pumps to far-flung hamlets in Majhora (Madhya Pradesh) or Turla (Odisha), the solar powered ice cart began as a fun-filled research project.
In fact, before Sunlit Future which is focused on experimentation and research on solar photovoltaic and thermal technologies and products on the solar energy platform, renewable energy has been an active idea for over two decades through the AuroRE.
Sunlit Future aims at fusing solar energy technologies into the daily lifestyle of urban and rural India with positive environmental and social impact through solar pump systems, water heaters, public lights, on-grid and off-grid power systems.
