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.

Solar Insights Magazine, published by Microgrid Media, focuses on the latest innovations in solar energy. Each issue highlights important developments, creative solutions, and the people working to make a greener future. In this edition, we cover topics like floating solar farms in U.S. cities and the exciting idea of collecting solar power from space. Our goal is to inform and inspire, showing the endless possibilities of solar 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