This book is about solar electricity. Solar electricity is a form of renewable energy and it is the process of generating electricity from sunlight using photovoltaic cells. Solar electric systems are currently in use in many developing and developed countries throughout the world, supplying electricity for homes, communications, health care, security systems, transportation, and many more applications.
Solar electric systems are best suited to places where there is plenty of sunshine throughout the year. Solar electric system can be used to power a radio, a watch, a calculator or a small communications system or can be used to supply all the electricity requirements of a home or or even a small village.
The cost of photovoltaic modules are falling all the time and as a result of this, solar electricity is becoming a very popular source of renewable energy, specially in hot countries with many hours of sunshine.
Although there are many books available about the physics of solar cells and the theory of light. This book is based on the theory of sunlight and solar cells and very importantly, on the applications of this theory to the design of solar electric systems. The book includes a large number of computer programs for the solution of solar electricity problems with the help of computers. All the programs given in the book have been written using the industry standard C programming language. The programs have been tested on PC or compatible computers, but they can be compiled with little or no change to run on different types of computers.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to the concept of energy… Chapter 2 briefly describes the solar energy, the solar spectrum, and the forms of solar radiation on and outside earth’s atmosphere.
Chapter 3 is an introduction to the solar radiation measuring devices, including sunshine recorders, pyranometers and pyrheliometers. Chapter 4 is about solar radiation geometry. Chapter 5 is an introduction to the theory of solar cell physics. The theory of semiconductor devices, p-n junctions, and the photovoltaic effect are described with little mathematical treatment. The I-V curve of a solar cell and the various curve characteristics have been studied with worked examples and computer programs. The photovoltaic system configurations, parts of photovoltaic systems, and storage sub-systems are described in detail in Chapter 6. Example configurations of complete systems are also given in this chapter.
Chapter 7 is a detailed study of the problem of sizing solar electricity systems. Applications of solar electric systems are covered in general in Chapter 8. Finally, Chapter 9 covers the topic of energy cost and economics. The chapter discusses the steps involved in calculating the cost of generating solar electricity. Worked examples are given to clarify the concepts.
This book was written by Prof. Dr. Doğan İbrahim who has much more publications in electronics field and we have the big honour to publish them. This book will be useful to university or higher technology students studying a course in general energy topics, renewable energy, solar electricity, or solar geometry. The book should also be a source of valuable information to practicing engineers who may be involved with the theory or applications of solar electricity.

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