Thermal solar cookers have been used in sunny U.S. locations to cook food to reduce energy consumption, to save money, and to '"go off-the-grid." The 2009 Residential Energy Consumption Survey (2009 RECS) data indicates that cooking represents approximately 7% of the total electrical consumption in U.S. households. A significant portion of that energy can be saved by solar cooking, but to date there has been no published data to substantiate this. In the last decade, we have witnessed acceptance of more efficient household products. Some of these save very little for each household, but have their greatest impact on the larger utility and community scale. For solar cookers to gain acceptance at these levels; however, there must be a better substantiated understanding of the potential savings achievable from them. As a step in that direction, a survey was conducted interviewing U.S. solar cooks about their cooking habits during the summer of 2012. Several survey questions paralleled the 2009 and 2012 RECS. The surveyed solar cooking households averaged over 70 solar cooking days in 2012, saving 33% of their total cooking energy during the solar cooking months. This was estimated to be equal to 15% of their total annual cooking energy. The survey results indicate that an average U.S. solar cooking household would save 190 kWh per year. Encouragingly, the survey results are not as climate-correlated as had been supposed.
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