My Good Results with Solar-Powered Domestic Refrigeration

By Carter Quillen

Last year I built an ambulatory solar powered frozen food dispenser or solar ice cream cart to demonstrate the feasibility of solar refrigeration and sell a few Klondikes on the weekend. It works pretty well and I've had good results from my efforts selling prepackaged frozen confectionary at various events.
While doing these events and constantly talking about the virtues of solar refrigeration, I got the idea to use ice cream carts for environmental activism on a broad scale, at least in Florida and perhaps nationally. If these machines could be made readily available to a wide variety of environmental groups and venues, as well as individual entrepreneurs, then put on the streets in large numbers, perhaps the feasibility of actually switching to solar might become more embraceable to the average John Q. Public.
My own experience has shown that considerable revenue can be generated and the public is intrigued and often excited about the fact that the cart is totally solar powered. While the money making aspect and general exposure would be good for various individuals and environmental groups, I think the more important part might be the psychological effect it could have on the greater populace. By seeing these contraptions become a common sight on the street corners of Florida, or Anytown USA, the public is constantly exposed to a tangible example of solar energy at work, making the prospect of using it in their own lives more likely.
Solar powered domestic refrigeration is a viable and cost effective decentralized energy infrastructure strategy right now, today, using off the shelf components from a growing worldwide alternative energy industry. This one nitch in our energy consumption is like 5% of the total electricity consumed in the US. And because building codes require it, every home in America has a dedicated circuit to the refrigerator. This makes installing a micropower system with a small auxiliary transfer switch dedicated to domestic refrigeration even simpler to implement on a grande scale.
I wish I had the resources to just build a dozen of them myself and put them on the internet for sale but I don't. It was all I could do to find the money to build a prototype to prove it would work and make my own personal environmental statement. So I've decided look for collaborators. While an order for 100 units would be better, an order for as few as a dozen would achieve an economy of scale necessary to get the cost down to the $3500 range. This compares quite favorably with similar conventional mobile vending units. And for about $1000 more, I could equip the cart with an electric drive system so it was self propelled, (by solar). This is an option that is not even available on conventional vending units.
With an initial order or some form of backing to begin making the first batch, a production design could be finalized in about 6 weeks and I have a fabricator here in Tennessee that is ready and waiting to go to work whenever I can get him the plans. (creating local jobs btw)
Once we have units in production, this technology could be configured and used in other ways besides selling ice cream, such as third world relief efforts. I'll bet a couple dozen portable solar powered refrigerator/freezers would come in handy in Haiti right now and there are many other remote applications for a low cost solar refrigeration system.
One final thought for an even bigger picture. One of the huge factors for quality of life in developing nations is refrigeration. The desire for refrigeration is a driving force in bringing electricity to new consumers in many developing nations. If we could get the third world to start out with solar refrigeration, we could slow the need for growth of the electric power industry. Think about that aspect for a minute because it's a BIG ONE! If all those billions of Chinese, Indian, and other third world rising consumers had the option of affordable solar power refrigerators with some excess energy capacity for a few lights, and a TV, maybe they wouldn't be in such a big hurry to get an electric bill to go with it. And this decentralized path to electrification would put a lot more local people to work and be a lot better for the environment than building new power plants and running transmission lines.
Attached is a picture of me at the Earthday event in Estero Florida last year. My concept for the first production model is to produce a unit that is considerably smaller and easier to handle than this prototype but you can get the general idea. Eventually, there would probably be several models and sizes to choose from.
Anyone who thinks they might be interested in helping me move this project forward and would like more information is encourage to contact me directly by email at [email protected] or phone at 423-342-1324.