Traditional texts in solar energy engineering have often emerged from mechanical or chemical engineering fields. Instead, Solar Energy Conversion Systems approaches solar energy conversion from the perspectives of integrative design, environmental technology, sustainability science, and materials science in the wake of amazing new thin films, polymers, and glasses developed by the optoelectronics and semiconductor industries.
This is a new solar text for the new generation of green job designers and developers. It's highlighted with vignettes that break down solar conversion into useful stories and provides common points of reference, as well as techniques, for effective estimation of evolving technologies.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction2. Context and Philosophy of Design
3. Laws of Light
4. Physics of Light, Heat, Work, and Photoconversion
5. Meteorology: The Many Facets of the Sky
6. Sun-Earth Geometry
7. Applying the Angles to Shadows
8. Measure and Estimation of the Solar Resource
9. Solar Energy Economics
10. Solar Project Finance
11. The Sun As Commons
12. Systems Logic of Devices: Patterns
13. Systems Logic of Devices: Optocalorics
14. Systems Logic of Devices: Optoelectronics
15. Concentration-The Pattern to Manipulate Light
16. Project Design
Appendix
A: Energy Conversion Systems
B: Numeracy and Units in Solar Energy

