Solar

An engrossing, satirical and very funny new novel on climate change. Michael Beard is in his late fifties; bald, overweight, unprepossessing—a Nobel Prize-winning physicist whose best work is behind him. Trading on his reputation, he speaks for enormous fees, lends his name to the letterheads of renowned scientific institutions and half-heartedly heads a government-backed initiative tackling global warming. An inveterate philanderer, Beard finds his fifth marriage floundering. But this time it is different: she is having the affair, and he is still in love with her. When Beard's professional and personal worlds are entwined in a freak accident, an opportunity presents itself, a chance for Beard to extricate himself from his marital mess, reinvigorate his career and very possibly save the world from environmental disaster. With a global scope, Solar is a comedy dealing directly with the crises of today. A story of one man's ambitions and self-deceptions, it is a startling and stylish new departure in the work of one of the world's great writers.

Off Grid Solar is a pocket guide and quick reference for anyone looking to build an electrical energy system using free sunshine available to us all. Are you a self-reliant builder who is ready to become energy independent? Are you an inquisitive builder who wants to know how solar energy can power your life indefinitely?

The use of solar collectors for domestic hot water over the past 20 years has demonstrated that solar heating systems are now founded on a reliable and mature technology. However, the development of similar, but more complex, systems to provide both domestic hot water and space heating (solar combisystems) resulted in a diverse range of different designs that were not carefully optimized to reflect local climate and practice. Application of energy-efficient building strategies such as improved thermal insulation and use of low temperature heat supply systems is becoming increasingly common. This trend, combined with growing environmental awareness and the subsidies available in certain countries, favours an increase in market share for solar combisystems. The need for guidelines in selecting the appropriate system and designing this system according to the specific needs of the building and the local environment is therefore now increasingly pressing. This book fills that need.

First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

More energy from the sun strikes Earth in an hour than is consumed by humans in an entire year. Efficiently harnessing solar power for sustainable generation of hydrogen requires low-cost, purpose-built, functional materials combined with inexpensive large-scale manufacturing methods. These issues are comprehensively addressed in On Solar Hydrogen & Nanotechnology – an authoritative, interdisciplinary source of fundamental and applied knowledge in all areas related to solar hydrogen. Written by leading experts, the book emphasizes state-of-the-art materials and characterization techniques as well as the impact of nanotechnology on this cutting edge field. Addresses the current status and prospects of solar hydrogen, including major achievements, performance benchmarks, technological limitations, and crucial remaining challenges Covers the latest advances in fundamental understanding and development in photocatalytic reactions, semiconductor nanostructures and heterostructures, quantum confinement effects, device fabrication, modeling, simulation, and characterization techniques as they pertain to solar generation of hydrogen Assesses and establishes the present and future role of solar hydrogen in the hydrogen economy Contains numerous graphics to illustrate concepts, techniques, and research results On Solar Hydrogen & Nanotechnology is an essential reference for materials scientists, physical and inorganic chemists, electrochemists, physicists, and engineers carrying out research on solar energy, photocatalysis, or semiconducting nanomaterials, both in academia and industry. It is also an invaluable resource for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers as well as business professionals and consultants with an interest in renewable energy.

To solve the climate crisis, the world must make a wholesale shift to renewable energy technologies. With surging growth in emerging markets, this transformation takes on even greater urgency. The challenges - and opportunities - are immense. Selling Solar considers how such a shift might happen. Focusing on the case of solar photovoltaics, it shows how, at the start of the 21st century, this promising technology began to diffuse rapidly in select emerging markets, after years of struggling to take off. What were the initial barriers to diffusion? How were they overcome? Who did it? And how can this success be replicated? Drawing on literature on innovation diffusion and entrepreneurship, the author answers these questions, showing how entrepreneurs affected profound technological change not just through the solar systems they sold, but through the example they set to both new market entrants and policymakers. In analysing how this happened, this book offers important lessons for the diffusion of a range of renewable energy technologies in emerging markets, and for the advancement of the sector as a whole. Selling Solar is essential reading for anyone who believes in a renewable energy future and wants it sooner rather than later.

Solar sailing - using the sun as a propellant - offers the possibility of low-cost long-distance missions that are impossible with conventional spacecraft. This first comprehensive book on this propulsion method provides a detailed account of solar sailing, at a high technical level, but in a way accessible to the scientifically informed layperson. Solar sail orbital dynamics and solar radiation pressure form the foundations of the book, but the engineering design of solar sails is also considered, along with potential mission applications.

Proceedings of the Monterey Workshop, held in Monterey, California, August 1999

Solar Photovoltaic Technology Production: Potential Environmental Impacts and Implications for Governance provides an overview of the emerging industrial PV sector, its technologies, and the regulatory frameworks supporting them. This new book reviews and categorizes the potential environmental impacts of several main PV technologies, examining the extent to which current EU governance frameworks regulate such impacts. By identifying the gaps or regulatory mismatches and creating a basis for normative recommendations on governance change, this book analyzes potential governance implications and their impacts in relation to manufacturers upscaling PV production techniques. Fills the need for a coherent source of information on the potential impacts of different PV technologies Provides comprehensive coverage of lifecycle analysis (LCA) of PV technologies in a single reference Analyzes relevant governance arrangements for researchers and manufacturers