History & Map

SolarFire.org was created in 2007 to make widely available the information around the Solar Fire technology.

Originated by Fraser Symington in Canada, principally developed in Mexico by a team led by Mike Sacco, resulting in the Helios oven, and then developed to small industrial scale by Eerik and Eva Wissenz in Europe and India.

Since the beginning, the Solar Fire has been spread by individuals with personal projects.

When Eva and Eerik Wissenz met, they both felt the necessity to give a platform to these actions to be more visible and understandable for people. Cheap solar thermal wasn’t easy to understand at that time ... and we remember the days when "peak oil" was either unknown or dismissed (i.e. 2007)!

So, we created the Solar Fire website and a non-profit association in France (2007-2010). We offered workshops, designed constructions guides and put all the Solar Fire material online. We auto-financed everything and wanted to work with NGOs to spread the solar fire as much and as fast as possible.

In 2009 we worked with Mr. Desai in India and built a 10m^2 vertical model at Tinytech Factories, nearly twice as big as any other model built at the time. Mr. Desai is very inspired by Gandhi’s philosophy (read an interview here). We also started to see the wide potential for industries to use the technology but also to spread the technology by making it commercially available.

In 2011 we built a 32m^2 model with Tinytech and ran a steam engine. Currently, a 90m^2 model is nearing completion.

However, at this stage the self-financed, spontaneous-open-creativity, model broke down since designing at large scales requires many months of continuous work including computer modeling. Though trial and error is a great way to develop at small scales, at larger scales any mistake can be extremely costly and time consuming. By modeling in the computer it’s possible to study the optics, dimension everything correctly, and estimate power; a powerful tool but very time consuming.

Though we firmly believe in Open Source software, we quickly realized that the Open Source software model only works with a minimum of documentation. In the case of Solar Fire this not only includes how the code is put together but also the math the code represents and the machine the math represents. It was difficult enough to self-finance developing the software, but correctly documenting it is impossible.

Also, with more and more examples of the use of the technology, more breakthroughs in simplifying the technique, more people building spontaneously, we also felt that it was important to be full time on the project to allow the fastest possible diffusion and development.

So, we have decided to develop Solar Fire with an open business model which is possible thanks to investment from a group of individuals (see Who we are?).

At the moment (Dec. 2011), we can stay free and open source with all the DIY section and we’re able to rebuild the website so others can easily share and discuss their projects and ideas.

Working with businesses we’re able to augment and document the software which we intend to release progressively in Open Source.

Contributions of note

• A Helios guide has been made by Marie Testud after building a Helios oven in Mali.
• The Batant, small demonstration unit, was created in France with Baptiste Lavigne and Nathan Guérin.
• A completely independent and blogged construction of a Helios in Texas by Ray Menke.
• The Solar Fire Simulator, a dynamic simulation program written in Octave produced with the participation of the Vagabonds of Energy in India.

Map of DIY and local Solar Fire

View DIY and local Solar Fire in a larger map

We thanks all the people who have supported Solar Fire.