A refrigerator, (colloquially called fridge or icebox) is a machine for keeping food and drinks cold. A freezer is a special type of refrigerator that stores food at freezing temperatures. The process of refrigeration is the removal of heat from a substance to lower and/or maintain its temperature below room temperature.
Cold temperatures help food stay fresh longer. The basic idea behind refrigeration is to slow down the activity of bacteria (which all food contains) so that it takes longer for the bacteria to spoil the food. Refrigeration and freezing are the two most important ways of preserving food in our time.
A refrigerator or freezer or even cold rooms can be designed to use electricity from solar panels. A refrigerator can be connected to a solar power system and used directly as an appliance. Otherwise, a solar refrigerator is a refrigerator which runs on energy directly provided by solar panels.
In 2018, a Kenyan start-up that makes solar freezers, Solar Freeze won MIT's Technology Access Global Grand Prize. Their goal was to help farmers deal with post-harvest losses by providing them access to a portable cold room as a service.
Components of a Typical Solar Freezer
Solar panels. The solar panels serve to produce electricity from sunlight.
Solar controller. Solar controllers is a voltage and/or current regulator which serves to keep the batteries in a solar panel-deep cycle inverter system from overcharging. Read more here.
Batteries to store excess power for use during nighttime when there is no production from the solar panels.
A refrigerator.
Solar freezers can be incorporated into warehouse-size or room-size cold storage rooms that can be transported or installed at a location.
Business owners in the perishable food production, picnicking, event management, food storage and transportation industry will find systems like the solar freezer a powerful business option. SolarKobo engineers are here to provide guidance for users who may want to acquire a solar freezer in Lagos and throughout Nigeria.
NEWS FLASH: In January 2019, the Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh said at the First National Tomato Stakeholders Summit in Kano State that the Federal Government had plans to provide solar-powered cold rooms in Kano for the preservation of tomatoes in fifteen locations in the state. Read full story here.