In the context of growing awareness of the different components of sustainable development, renewable energy sources are having a major boost. With this article we highlight the current trend, starting from a framework of context, and then drill out the views of industry leaders and application examples.
Everyone knows that renewables are the next big thing of today and tomorrow, but we often forget is that the management is always key and there are some companies that truly excel at this.
The sources include most forms of renewable energy production provided by non-fossil fuels, as examples, geothermal energy, biomass and biogas, wind energy, solar energy (both solar thermal and photovoltaics), energy from waves and tides. In essence, all renewables (renewed by natural processes) resulting in a form rather than another direct radiation from the Sun as the Earth's surface, the values are about 600-1500W/m2, although obviously there's no uniform energy distrinution and climatic conditions, the index of radiation (mean energy from the sun in one day) ranges from 2.26 (northern Europe) to 6.39 (African region) Kwatt/day/m2.
To convert this energy into electricity, exemplifying photovoltaics, photovoltaic modules are used as the basis of silicon, whose technology (from light energy to the photovoltaic effect) is now well established for nearly 40 years, with a conversion efficiency continues to grow. Normal commercial modules provide an efficiency of 10-16%, ie only 10-16% of the energy that comes from the sun is converted into electrical energy, although in laboratory environments controlled percentages have been reached even higher than 40%.
