We are so happy to start a series of podcast. We are on journey to share more and more about our vision and our energy, everything that is behind the scene of Solar Fire. From solving energy poverty to personal empowerment, from gender equality in the team to specific feminin challenges in the renewable energy field, from a backyard in Canada to several countries in Africa.

The first three episodes are :

1. Solving energy poverty
Our Chief Operations Officer, Lorin Symington, shares how his family came up with the idea of this solar concentrator, how he gets to know the cultures in the different countries he visits and what motivates him. It was recorded between Burkina-Faso and Finland at the end of 2020.

2. Solar Fire Women : A conversation
Finally, Solar Fire reached gender equality ! For many years, Solar Fire was a team of six persons with only one woman. Nothing in her previous life prepared her to be one of the co-founders of a tech project meant to solve energy poverty. In this second episode, the 7 women working now for Solar Fire or who are promoting the Lytefire tech are sharing their experience, challenges and hopes from Finland, Switzerland, Kenya and France.

3. Can we accelerate the transformation of society by accelerating our own change ?
Our CEO, Urs Riggenbach, shares about the change dynamics and whether we are ready or not for climate change, developing an interesting and deep perspective based on his decade of work serving Solar Fire with the purpose of developing an energy tool that is truly empowering people. As he says, “the growth of an organization literally is the growth of the individuals within the organization.”

Listen here. We hope you’ll like it !

This autumn is so exciting that we didn’t get any chance to blog and share a bit more with you guys !! Some of our GoSol-team came together in Switzerland. This was a good chance to plan our next steps and cook solar meals all together, and also it was a great opportunity to present GoSol next projects and the Lytefire solar concentrator to Switzerland !

Will Cleaver and Lorin Symington spent long days at the workshop at the Rosegghof (our Swiss Headquarters in Solothurn). The result was a brand new, bright version of our solar concentrator, the Lytefire, and a hybrid solar roaster/oven ! And the best way to explain how the Lytefire works is to show it !

That is exactly what we did at our “Experience Event” at the Rosegghof. With about 25 guests we enjoyed pizza together, drank coffee and tea, and distilled essential oil of rosemary to produce our own deodorant and scents – all of it only with solar energy from our Lytefire ! A few weeks after, early October, we did another event focused on baking and the result was a-ma-zing ! We can tell you, that a solar baked “Hefezopf” (a Swiss kind of sweet bread) is really delicious !

And pastry chef Linda Gutknecht from Linda’s Art in Solothurn produced some solar cupcakes and got really excited about solar baking saying that "it’s even better than her electric oven", so there will be more Solothurner solar baking in the near future for sure.

Our partner Beto Borges from Forest Trends also joined us in Solothurn for an evening presentation. Beto presented our work in the Amazon, and talked about the importance of forest stewardship, and how a solution like GoSol approach can enhance the stewardship of communities in the Amazon forest by helping to sustainable add value to non timber forest products.

Lorin Symington spoke about the philosophy and history of GoSol, and shared his experience building solar concentrators in the Philippines and East Africa. Kurt Bauman, vocational teacher and early adopter of our solar concentrator, was also here to share his user experience since 2015 and present our educational training.

Urs Riggenbach then showed the next steps that are planned, and how to get involved with GoSol. The event ended with fruitful conversations with our guests while enjoying a nice glass of wine.

Even though autumn in Solothurn is best known for heavy fog, we had some amazing luck : at the HESO 2019 we could show off our Lytefire with perfect blue sky ! Read on here about how we fried delicious veggie-burgers, pan-roasted almonds, and produced our first Solothurner solar roasted coffee beans.

Next step : the GoSol Impact Event in Zürich the 14th of November 2019. We would love to meet you and meet the impact investors that will scale up with you. Check it out here !

Recently we connected the two early adopters Kurt Baumann, who built a Sol4 with his school-class in Switzerland and Boris Awume from Togo, whom we portrayed earlier. Boris currently works in Switzerland but he’s going to start building in Togo at the beginning of September. We used the opportunity to get the two early adopters together.

After some coffee we dove right in: Kurt took us to the school building where he now stores the Sol4 during the summer holidays. Kurt suspended the whole mirror-rows straight from the sealing: "That way they take up less space and we keep them out of reach from our students."

When not in use, Kurt disassembles the Sol4 and suspends the whole mirror-rows to savely store them.

Boris taking a pic of a mirror row to send to his prep-team in Togo.

We took one mirror row out into the sunlight to have a closer look at the individual pieces Boris will need to fabricate in Togo. These are notably all straight and simple metal pieces that only need cutting and welding. They also looked at the upward reflector and the custom tools we outline in our construction guides:

Kurt and Boris examining the upward reflector.

Kurt explaining the handling of the curstom mirror calibration tools.

I really liked the fact that we built our own tools to complete the machine. These tools are quick to build and effective for the job, and I felt revived in the age-old art of toolmaking.

Kurt Baumann, Teacher at Schulzentrum Kreuzfeld 4, Langenthal, Switzerland

Stay tuned for the next update from our early adopters! Want to get involved? Check out how to join our early adopter team here: www.gosol.org/Early-Adopters

After setting up the solar concentrator in the school’s yard, the students had to calibrate the mirrors. Soon enough the vegetables, burgers and bacon were easily cooked with nothing more than sunlight. This is what Free The Sun is all about!

As indicated by the GoSol.org team it really did take us 2 hours to calibrate the mirrors but then our surprise was great once the water started boiling and the veggies and burgers started to sizzle in the pan!

Kurt Baumann, Teacher at Schulzentrum Kreuzfeld 4, Langenthal, Switzerland

It was a great success: everyone who came out of the school-building waited in line to get their share of the solar snack the students prepared for everyone.

The Next Steps

Now that the summer holidays approached the solar concentrator gets a break too, until Kurt starts the year with a new class of students. Apart from cooking and demonstrating renewable energy, schoolteacher Kurt is an artist at heart and is already thinking of using the powerful solar array for his student’s next projects.

Kurt Baumann is a handicraft teacher in Langenthal, Switzerland. He is our first MultiPass supporter, and wants to build a solar concentrator as an educational project together with his students.

Kurt teaches his students anything from woodworking to welding to general handicraft skills. Building the Sol4 his’ class final project and the 15 to 16 year old students are truly mastering their task.

Here are some images from the constructions underway.