OCR Text |
Show Use Solar Power to Dry The Utah Energy Office is taking a step back in history by encouraging the use of solar power to solve the problems of food storage and energy costs. . The Energy Office is offering of-fering a free booklet, "Dry It, You'll Like It," with simple, do-it-yourself plans lor three inexpensive solar food dehydrators. People have been drying food for storage for cen-turies-but only recently with electricity. The heat of the sun did the job for thousands of years before the advent of electric drying units. With today's energy problems, solar power is becoming more and more attractive again. Because of Utah's upsurge in home food preservation, the demand for food dehvdrators is phenomenal. So 'instead of consuming more electricity, let's go back to nature and use sun power for preserving food. A solar food dehydrator can dry any fruit, vegetable, meat or spice, and can complete most drying jobs in one or two days, depending on sunlight, cloud cover, and humidity. Meat drying will take longer. "Dry It, You'll Like It" outlines plans for dehydrators that are self-contained self-contained and function as small heat collectors, attracting at-tracting and multiplying the drying powers of the sun. The solar dehydrators dry food as quickly as electric units and are about four times faster than natural sun drying. Apricots can be dried in about one day with a solar or electric dryer as compared to four days for natural drying. Another advantage of solar drying is the saving in electricity costs. Many electric dryers consume about 600 watts an hour. Over a typical drying season, an electric dryer could use more than 300,000 watt hours (300 kilowatt hours) at a cost of nearly $15. With the solar dehydrator costing less than $50 to make, its cost would be made up in electricity savings in about three drying seasons. For your free copy of "Dry It, You'll Like It," call the Utah Energy Hot Line at 581-5424 581-5424 or 1-800-662-3633 toll-free. toll-free. Let's make use of our least expensive and most readily available energy resource-the sun. ) |