Solar Cooling Engineering awarded by the Chill Challenge (Engineers Without Borders – USA)

Engineers Without Borders – USA has launched a Chill Challenge to support the development of refrigerators and icemakers that are significantly more affordable for off-grid communities than currently available units.

Solar Ice Maker Using Key Components and Engineering 

Solar Cooling Engineering will use solar powered SelfChill® cooling units for its ice-maker to produce 100-120 kg ice per day. The concept is fully scalable and allow a local assembly and the integration of locally available materials. The ice-maker can be powered without electrical batteries.

The Chill Challenge helps our team to bring our design for a semi-industrial ice-maker into reality, which is fully scalable and suitable for local production. Our early stage experiments in the last months at smaller scale have been very promising and we are looking forward to build and test the final system with the support of Engineers without Borders

Julian Krüger, Project Manager

Based on our experience, we believe that refrigeration systems which can be produced, adapted and assembled locally are the way forward to solve this challenge. Therefore, we focus on making affordable components available, which can be used to create a variety of different systems of different sizes. Our ice-maker should become an inspiring example on how to considerably decrease distribution and maintenance cost in rural areas. –

Victor Torres Toledo, CEO Solar Cooling Engineering

Our mission is to lift people out of poverty and reliable, affordable and sustainable refrigeration is a huge step in the right direction. Successful solutions to our Refrigeration Challenge will be a game changer for millions of people. We are extremely proud to launch our Challenge, catalyze innovative solutions and bring affordable refrigeration to improve the lives of those far removed from the grid

Cathy Leslie, EWB-USA Chief Executive Officer

Learn more about the Chill Challenge