This book examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic (PV) solar power, including sound art, wearable technology, public art, industrial design, digital media, building integrated design, and many others. The growth in artists and designers incorporating solar power into their work reflects broader social, economic, and political events. As the cost of PV cells has come down, they have become more accessible and have found their way into a growing range of design applications and artistic practices. As climate change continues to transform our environment and becomes a greater public concern, the importance of integrating sustainable energy technologies into our culture grows as well. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, design studies, environmental studies, environmental humanities, and sustainable energy design.
This book examines the history of creative applications of photovoltaic solar power, including sound art, wearable technology, public art, industrial design, digital media, building integrated design, and many others. The growth in artists and designers incorporating solar power into their work reflects broader social, economic, and political events. As the cost of photovoltaic cells has come down, they have become more accessible and have found their way into a growing range of design applications and artistic practices. As climate change continues to transform our environment and becomes a greater public concern, the importance of integrating sustainable energy technologies into our culture grows as well. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, design studies, environmental studies, environmental humanities, and sustainable energy design.
Solar cells are semiconductor devices that convert light photons into electricity in photovoltaic energy conversion and can help to overcome the global energy crisis. Solar cells have many applications including remote area power systems, earth-orbiting satellites, wristwatches, water pumping, photodetectors and remote radiotelephones. Solar cell technology is economically feasible for commercial-scale power generation. While commercial solar cells exhibit good performance and stability, still researchers are looking at many ways to improve the performance and cost of solar cells via modulating the fundamental properties of semiconductors. Solar cell technology is the key to a clean energy future. Solar cells directly harvest energy from the sun’s light radiation into electricity are in an ever-growing demand for future global energy production. Solar cell-based energy harvesting has attracted worldwide attention for their notable features, such as cheap renewable technology, scalable, lightweight, flexibility, versatility, no greenhouse gas emission, environment, and economy friendly and operational costs are quite low compared to other forms of power generation. Thus, solar cell technology is at the forefront of renewable energy technologies which are used in telecommunications, power plants, small devices to satellites. Aiming at large-scale implementation can be manipulated by various types used in solar cell design and exploration of new materials towards improving performance and reducing cost. Therefore, in-depth knowledge about solar cell design is fundamental for those who wish to apply this knowledge and understanding in industries and academics. This book provides a comprehensive overview on solar cells and explores the history to evolution and present scenarios of solar cell design, classification, properties, various semiconductor materials, thin films, wafer-scale, transparent solar cells, and so on. It also includes solar cells’ characterization analytical tools, theoretical modeling, practices to enhance conversion efficiencies, applications and patents.
In his signature style, Allan Drummond tells the story of the largest solar plant in the world, the Noor Solar Power Plant in Morocco's Sahara Desert, in Solar Story—by relating it to the everyday life of a schoolgirl in a small village next to the plant. As we see on a class field trip, the plant is not only bringing reliable power to the village and far beyond, but is providing jobs, changing lives, and upending the old ways of doing things—starting within the girl's own family. Blending detail-filled watercolors, engaging cartoon-style narration, in-depth sidebars, and an afterword, the author showcases another real-world community going green in amazing ways. A “powerful” addition to the author’s acclaimed series about conservation and renewable energy innovations in everyday life.
This reprint is a dramatic, fast-moving voyage from the dawn of civilization to the 21st century, celebrating and reminding us of the importance of the sun.
Our civilisation stands on the brink of catastrophe. Our thirst for energy has led to threats from global warming, nuclear disaster and conflict in oil-rich countries. We are running out of options. Solar power, Keith Barnham argues, is the answer. In this eye-opening book, he shows how a solar revolution is developing based on one of Einstein's lesser known discoveries, one that gave us laptop computers and mobile phones. An accessible guide to renewable technology and a hard-hitting critique of the arguments of solar sceptics, The Burning Answer outlines a future in which the fuel for electric cars will be generated on our rooftops. It is, above all, an impassioned call to arms to join the solar revolution before it's too late.
How solar could spark a clean-energy transition through transformative innovation—creative financing, revolutionary technologies, and flexible energy systems. Solar energy, once a niche application for a limited market, has become the cheapest and fastest-growing power source on earth. What's more, its potential is nearly limitless—every hour the sun beams down more energy than the world uses in a year. But in Taming the Sun, energy expert Varun Sivaram warns that the world is not yet equipped to harness erratic sunshine to meet most of its energy needs. And if solar's current surge peters out, prospects for replacing fossil fuels and averting catastrophic climate change will dim. Innovation can brighten those prospects, Sivaram explains, drawing on firsthand experience and original research spanning science, business, and government. Financial innovation is already enticing deep-pocketed investors to fund solar projects around the world, from the sunniest deserts to the poorest villages. Technological innovation could replace today's solar panels with coatings as cheap as paint and employ artificial photosynthesis to store intermittent sunshine as convenient fuels. And systemic innovation could add flexibility to the world's power grids and other energy systems so they can dependably channel the sun's unreliable energy. Unleashing all this innovation will require visionary public policy: funding researchers developing next-generation solar technologies, refashioning energy systems and economic markets, and putting together a diverse clean energy portfolio. Although solar can't power the planet by itself, it can be the centerpiece of a global clean energy revolution. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Solar PV Power: Design, Manufacturing and Applications from Sand to Systems details developments in the solar cell manufacturing process, including information from system design straight through to the entire value chain of Solar PV Manufacturing. In addition, the book includes aspects of ground mounted grid connected solar PV systems and optimization for solar PV plants, economic analyses, and reliability and performance. The advances and processes of solar product technology and reliability, along with the performance of solar PV plants and operational and maintenance aspects with advance diagnostic techniques are also presented, making this an ideal resource. With rapid change in the manufacturing process, it is crucial for solar cells and solar PV modules to adapt to new developments in solar products, especially with regard to reliability, financial aspects and performance. - Includes detailed solar panel module assembly and analysis - Offers new concepts for solar PV system design that are presented alongside field related issues and examples - Saves time and resources by collecting all pieces of information needed by engineers in the same text
A comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society throughout history, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. "I wait for new Smil books the way some people wait for the next 'Star Wars' movie. In his latest book, Energy and Civilization: A History, he goes deep and broad to explain how innovations in humans' ability to turn energy into heat, light, and motion have been a driving force behind our cultural and economic progress over the past 10,000 years. —Bill Gates, Gates Notes, Best Books of the Year Energy is the only universal currency; it is necessary for getting anything done. The conversion of energy on Earth ranges from terra-forming forces of plate tectonics to cumulative erosive effects of raindrops. Life on Earth depends on the photosynthetic conversion of solar energy into plant biomass. Humans have come to rely on many more energy flows—ranging from fossil fuels to photovoltaic generation of electricity—for their civilized existence. In this monumental history, Vaclav Smil provides a comprehensive account of how energy has shaped society, from pre-agricultural foraging societies through today's fossil fuel–driven civilization. Humans are the only species that can systematically harness energies outside their bodies, using the power of their intellect and an enormous variety of artifacts—from the simplest tools to internal combustion engines and nuclear reactors. The epochal transition to fossil fuels affected everything: agriculture, industry, transportation, weapons, communication, economics, urbanization, quality of life, politics, and the environment. Smil describes humanity's energy eras in panoramic and interdisciplinary fashion, offering readers a magisterial overview. This book is an extensively updated and expanded version of Smil's Energy in World History (1994). Smil has incorporated an enormous amount of new material, reflecting the dramatic developments in energy studies over the last two decades and his own research over that time.
