Solar energy

Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis.

It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on the way they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.

The large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity. The United Nations Development Programme in its 2000 World Energy Assessment found that the annual potential of solar energy was 1,575–49,837 exajoules (EJ). This is several times larger than the total world energy consumption, which was 559.8 EJ in 2012.

Solar Energy (journal)

Solar Energy is a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering research on solar energy such as photovoltaics and solar heating, but also its indirect usages like wind power or bioenergy. It is published by Elsevier on behalf of the International Solar Energy Society. The editor-in-chief is Yogi Goswami. According to the Journal Citation Reports, the journal has a 2013 impact factor of 3.541.

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Energy recovery

Energy recovery includes any technique or method of minimizing the input of energy to an overall system by the exchange of energy from one sub-system of the overall system with another. The energy can be in any form in either subsystem, but most energy recovery systems exchange thermal energy in either sensible or latent form.

In some circumstances the use of an enabling technology, either diurnal thermal energy storage or seasonal thermal energy storage (STES, which allows heat or cold storage between opposing seasons), is necessary to make energy recovery practicable. One example is waste heat from air conditioning machinery stored in a buffer tank to aid in night time heating. Another is an STES application at a foundry in Sweden. Waste heat is recovered and stored in a large mass of native bedrock which is penetrated by a cluster of 140 heat exchanger equipped boreholes (155mm diameter) that are 150m deep. This store is used for heating an adjacent factory as needed, even months later. An example of using STES to recover and utilize natural heat that otherwise would be wasted is the Drake Landing Solar Community in Alberta, Canada. The community uses a cluster of boreholes in bedrock for interseasonal heat storage, and this enables obtaining 97 percent of the year-round space heating from solar thermal collectors on the garage roofs. Another STES application is recovering the cold of winter by circulating water through a dry cooling tower, and using that to chill a deep aquifer or borehole cluster. The chill is later recovered from the storage for summer air conditioning. With a coefficient of performance (COP) of 20 to 40, this method of cooling can be ten times more efficient than conventional air conditioning.