I've had my Bio-Lite since August or so and really love it! I often take it with me when I'm camping; it wouldn't be an ideal backpacking stove due to the somewhat large-ish size and weight but it would be great for an "expedition" or longer trip. The ability to use anything on the ground as fuel would eliminate the need to carry gas. Last time I went out to the local state park for a quick overnighter (in case I don't get a chance before "real" winter) I took my new Traeger and the Bio-Lite along with my camera. I wanted to be able to post a few images to a few forums. Well, no pics of the food, I'm afraid. My brother and I were staying at the park and my sister, mother & my brother's GF came out Sat afternoon to cook and and hang out by the campfire for awhile. The Traeger worked great! You pretty much fill the hopper with pellets and select a temp and you get wood-generated heat and smoke. Friday nite I smoked some brats, chicken legs and flat iron steak. Saturday my sister brought ribeyes, and odd choice but the turned out well. For dinner I smoked a few pounds of chicken legs and thighs. Very tasty!
While lunch was smoking I turned my attention to the Bio-Lite. As some of you may recall, the company started out as a project to help improve life in sub-Saharan Africa. Cooking fires there generate a lot of pollution, and electricity for communications is unreliable. The Bio-Lite stove was designed to mitigate both problems. The stove has a small Li-On battery pack, a convection fan for the burn pot and a thermo-electric generator. When you turn it on the fan comes on; you light fuel (generally sticks, twigs, pine cones, etc) in the chamber and the forced air fans the flames to a very high level of heat. At full tilt there's almost no smoke at all.
I batonned some dry Ash wood into finger-sized sticks with my RAT 7. Most of the pieces are very small; it initially didn't occur to me to leave some bigger chunks to extend the burn time. Oh, well...live and learn.
Here's the stove at a full burn:
Note that the cord you see in the pics isn't running to the stove- the Traeger is plugged into it (it has an electric auger that moves pellets into the burn pot).
Now, the stove burns hot and can be used to cook but the real draw is the thermo-electric generator. Once the fire generates sufficient power to charge the battery the surplus can be used to charge another device via the USB terminal on the front.
Sorry if this one is a little blurry:
The stove ships with the battery at least partially charged. They advise the user to charge the battery completely at home. I opted not to do so to better see how long it takes to charge. So after receiving the stove in July, it sat unused til late October. So the battery was probably not all that juiced up.
I neglected to time how long it took to charge but I'd guestimate maybe 15-20 minutes. You can tell it's charged when the green bar on the front glows.
You can see from the light on my phone that it's drawing charge. I actually topped off my phone right from this stove.
It works very well! But I have to say if you use wood split down as far as I did be ready to keep shoving it in. The Bio-Lite has a voracious appetite and burns thru wood pretty fast! At least on the HIGH fan setting. Probably having some bigger pieces would have been wise. Next time!
All in all the Bio-Lite stove seems to live up to the hype. I'm not sure how durable it will be. It seems well made and is backed with a 1 year warranty but like any bit of tech I suppose it could fail. Funny, it really has very similar tech in the burn pot as the Traeger pellet grill it shared the deck with!
