Cincinnati inventor finding traction with solar grill that cooks at night

CINCINNATI - You wouldn’t expect to find a technology-driven startup in rustic Spring Grove Village, any more than you’d expect to find a solar-powered oven that can cook food at night.

And yet, Patrick Sherwin seems to have accomplished both with his four-year-old company that raised more than $146,000 this week with a Kickstarter campaign for a new product called the GoSun Grill. It’s similar to the GoSun Stove Sherwin has been selling since 2013 in that it uses nothing but solar energy to heat food inside a Pyrex vacuum tube.

But the grill offers a new wrinkle: A thermal battery that stores heat from sunlight during the day and deploys it when the sun goes down.

Patrick Sherwin

“It’s what we call a game changer,” said Sherwin, founder of Applied Sunshine LLC. “Solar ovens have never been able to work at night. Most of the world waits until evening to eat that big meal of the day. So, where solar ovens used to be great for lunch, now they’re great for dinner.”

Become a WCPO Insider to learn more about the GoSun Grill and why one California investor thinks it could be the first solar stove to go mainstream.