Malaysia-based online bookstore - 15 million titles - quick local delivery with tracking number
UPDATED September 2020! Field tested by hundreds of students in schools across North America, this easy-to-follow text is designed to take an extremely non-technical student with zero background in PV, and literally teach them how to design and install a variety of residential PV systems.
This text is also designed to help prepare students who wish to sit for industry-accepted certification programs such as the ETA Level 1 PV Certification or the NABCEP PV Certificate Programs.
Each chapter contains multiple choice review questions, as well as labs that comply with hands-on requirement of the ETA certification.
For Instructors: Classroom Power Points available that correspond to the text. FREE Desk Copies available for review. A narrated online course with slides, videos and labs also is available that tracks with the text.
Detailed answer keys for practice problems, Dozens of practice scenarios with answer key, Lab instruction and notes. Lab kits are also available. Updated annually. Electronic versions available.
UPDATED August 2022!
It is the advanced-level study guide that builds upon lessons learned in the introductory text, Understanding Photovoltaics.
This study guide builds upon a foundation of knowledge in residential solar PV installation and expands into the field of commercial project installation and project management.
This text is designed to help prepare students who wish to sit for industry-accepted certification programs such as the ETA Level 2 PV Certification or the NABCEP PV Installer or Designer Certification Program.
Each chapter contains multiple choice review questions.
This 600-page textbook includes the following chapters:
This 126-page textbook includes the following chapters:
You will learn how to pick the right charge controller. How and why you would select a certain size inverter (and what the heck is it), getting the right solar panel, sizing your battery. We also walk you through the wiring system, letting you know how to safely select the proper type and size of wire and fuses, and how to connect everything together.
And if that's not enough, we even take a pictorial walk through a real world example. Listing all the parts, giving you prices and where to buy them (this 400-watt generator can be built for less than $300), then showing each step in its construction.
The narrative is personal, simple, non-technical and easy to follow. A perfect project for a DIY enthusiast, a science classroom, or anyone who just wants to watch a movie while everyone else sits in the dark.
We also give guidelines on how to design and build a larger system capable of:
Solar generators make little or no noise when running, give off no fumes (so you can use them indoors), and are simple to build and maintain.
Ask yourself:
Do you feel that this generation, and the generations to come face a future of only limited resources - and even less hope?
Is this the last generation that will have access to millions of years of stored energy in the form of fossil fuels?
Do you feel like the corporations and politicians are lying about how much fossil fuels remain unused - and how much they will cost?
Do you feel like the system is about to implode?
Well, it's sooo much worse than that
And sooo much better...
This book traces the history of energy, from 1491 through today. It is a remarkable story. A story filled with one-armed bigamists, Texas Rangers named Lone Wolf hired by the governor to arrest anyone producing oil cheaper than big oil would like. Clandestine meetings in Scottish castles. Footraces to patent offices to steal inventions allowed to lapse by illiterate Italian immigrants (and as a result, Bell is remembered as the inventor of the telephone).
Nearly everything you ever learned about the history of energy is wrong. For example - Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb. The Wright Brothers were not the first to fly. Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, or the assembly line... in fact he arrived fairly late to the entire party.
And then there are the formal conspiracy theories - Was Prohibition an attempt by Standard Oil to eliminate competition from ethanol? Did GM conspire to dismantle the light rail system across the U.S (the U.S. Supreme Court thought so).
Our energy history leads to our energy present. A world that experienced peak coal (1998), peak natural gas (2003), and peak oil (2007). Will we repeat the same mistakes we have repeated many times before?
Now that we know where we have been, and where we are - where are we going?
Ten predictions for the coming two decades, as the BioMass Hits the Wind Turbine. For example:
Yes, everything is about to change. But rather than a future without hope - it will be a future without limits.
Easy to read. Entertaining. And packed with more facts than you will find pretty much anywhere (certainly more facts than you will find in Exxon's annual report).