Product Description

This up-to-date and comprehensive electronic book on two CD-ROMs presents an incredible, totally revised and greatly expanded collection of important documents and publications about solar energy, solar heating and lighting, solar concentrating technology, and photovoltaic (PV) solar power cells. Encyclopedic coverage of every practical aspect of solar power, heating, electricity, and research is thoroughly covered in this incredible collection! Federal documents cover the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Photovoltaics Program; National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Center for Photovoltaics; Photovoltaics for Buildings; Photovoltaics Silicon Materials Research; Solar Decathlon; Amorphous Silicon; NREL Solid State Theory Group and Solid State Spectroscopy. Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; Environmental Safety & Health; DOE Climate Challenge; National Center for Photovoltaics; Photovoltaics Research & Development; Photovoltaic Silicon Materials Research; Amorphous Silicon; Solid State Theory; Spectroscopy. National Center for Photovoltaics (NCPV) Partnership Opportunities; PV Roadmap; Physics and Design of Solar Cells; R & D Partner Fact Sheets. Photovoltaics for Buildings coverage includes: Learn About PV; Homes and Commercial Buildings; Whole-Building Design; Solar Electricity; New Applications and Lessons Learned Report, much more. Viable solar energy technology topics covered include: Solar Cells * photovoltaic (PV) power * flat-plate PV * concentrating PV * off-grid * on-grid * conversion efficiencies * solar thermal electric * solar industry * DOE research goals and targets * thermal dishes * towers * troughs * central generation * passive solar * solar water heating * solar heating and lighting * nanotechnology solar cells * organic solar cells * abbreviations and acronyms. Solar energy technologies have great potential to benefit our nation. They can diversify our energy supply, reduce our dependence on imported fuels, improve the quality of the air we breathe, offset greenhouse gas emissions, and stimulate our economy by creating jobs in the manufacturing and installation of solar energy systems. Concentrating Solar Power: CSP systems use reflective materials that concentrate the sun's heat energy to drive a generator that produces electricity. Photovoltaics: PV systems use semiconductor materials that convert sunlight directly to electricity. Solar Heating: Solar collectors absorb the sun's energy to provide low-temperature heat used directly for hot water or space heating for residential or commercial buildings. Solar Lighting: Parabolic collectors focus sunlight into a fiber optic system to illuminate building interiors with sunlight. The Solar America Initiative (SAI) is a part of the President's Advanced Energy Initiative and will accelerate the development of advanced photovoltaic materials with the goal of making it cost-competitive with other forms of renewable electricity by 2015. The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technology Program (SETP) will achieve the goals of the SAI through partnerships and strategic alliances with industry participants, universities, federal and state government, and other nongovernmental agencies by focusing primarily on four areas: Market Transformation - activities that address marketplace barriers and offer the opportunity for market expansion * Device and Process Proof of Concept - R&D activities addressing novel devices or processes with potentially significant performance or cost advantages * Component Prototype and Pilot-Scale Production - R&D activities emphasizing development of prototype PV components or systems produced at pilot-scale with demonstrated cost, reliability, or performance advantages * System Development and Manufacturing.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #591424 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-23
• Binding: CD-ROM
• 50258 pages

About the Author
This CD-ROM set with two discs is packed with over 50,000 pages reproduced using Adobe Acrobat PDF software - allowing direct viewing on Windows and Macintosh systems. The Acrobat cataloging technology adds enormous value and uncommon functionality to this impressive collection of government documents and material. This CD-ROM uses next-generation search technology that allows complete indexing and makes all files on the disc fully searchable. Our news and educational discs are privately compiled collections of official public domain U.S. government files and documents - they are not produced by the federal government. They are designed to provide a convenient user-friendly reference work, utilizing the benefits of the Adobe Acrobat format to uniformly present thousands of pages that can be rapidly reviewed, searched by finding specific words, or printed without untold hours of tedious research and downloading. Vast archives of important public domain government information that might otherwise remain inaccessible are available for instant review no matter where you are. This book-on-a-disc format makes a great reference work and educational tool. There is no other reference that is as fast, convenient, comprehensive, thoroughly researched, and portable - everything you need to know, from the federal sources you trust.

Customer Reviews

Complete waste of money
I bought this product based on the previous review (I am now suspicious if that really was an independent review).

Unfortunately, these CD's are completely useless. These only contain screen-shots of freely available information from government sites. I could see some value if these were grouped or sorted in any way (or the data pulled into excel).

But, it was nothing of the sort -- anyone could just surf the various websites to get the information for free. Additionally, the information was out of date the second they were put into the CD's...the sites are updated frequently.

Very disappointing -- I must admit that the low price did make me a bit suspicious...but, I bought it based on the review (which was utterly false). Save your money and just use Google!

Lot's of information, just it is all useless!
There is a lot of information on the Adobe Acrobat documents they put on the CD--thousands of pages actually. It's all completely useless. The PDF documents aren't even organized, they just have thousands of pages in each document to "make for easy searching" as the readme file claims . I bought the set and looked through it for 2008 information, it was few and far between.

Perhaps if it was better organized with categories by individual PDFs I could find what I want, but I am not going to look through screen shots taken off the Department Of Energy's website.

The information in this industry is rapidly changing each year, so using a report from 2006 would be far too risky now.I've found about 30 relevant, recent, and useful research reports on my own.

2008-2009 Essential Guide to Solar Energy, Photovoltaics, Solar Cells, Roof Panels, Heating, Lighting, Concentrating - CD's
For anyone who wants a reference source detailing all the various aspects of solar energy, solar heating and lighting, solar power cells, solar technology and photovoltaics, this is the guide for them. They will discover that these (2) CD's are more than worth the money they cost. This solar energy guide contains an archive of 50,000 pages of official public domain U.S. government files and documents, which were privately compiled. The data is very comprehensive, detailed, and thorough and is very well researched. I highly recommend it to any student of alternative energy or for anyone who wishes to research the field of solar power.