It has been designed in such a way that it will generate steam for cooking even in the absence of electricity to run the feed water pump for circulating water in the system.

The ministry offers support of up to 50 percent of the cost of such systems set up by non-profit bodies and up to 35 percent cost support to profit making bodies.

'Over 40 systems covering a dish area of about 12,000 sq metre have been supported by the ministry so far for various applications, though the major application is cooking only,' an official statement said.

Some of the large solar steam cooking systems installed include those at Mount Abu in Rajasthan for serving 10,000 people every day, and at Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh and Satyabhama university in Chennai, which cater to about 15,000 people a day.