Environmental Studies Lecture Notes Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Environmental Studies Lecture Notes - Case Study Example Next he went over the homework assignments and the reading assignments. As we finally got started with the class itself, he started a discussion what renewable sources of energy are. Essentially it's an energy source that renews itself without effort; they can be used over and over again. These kinds of sources can include solar, wind, biomass, hydrogen, geothermal energy, hydroelectric energy, and ocean energy. This class is focused more on production more than previous classes in the program because it's more cost-effective to conserve energy before you try to produce it. Each of these sources of energy have some positive and potentially negative elements that might come into play. Some of the first vocabulary he went over was solar constant, which is the amount of energy that goes by the earth. Insolation talks about how much solar radiation hits the ground and there are three different kinds - direct, diffuse, and reflected. One sun is another term that will come up often and ref ers to the amount of sun an area gets in a day. Azimuth and altitude angle. Altitude is the height of the sun in the sky. Azimuth angle is the angle from the south. This has an effect on where and what orientation we build solar panels to achieve maximum power source. The optimum is to go south, west is better than east, and consider areas of shade. The angle of the solar panels should be equal to the latitude, but can be adjusted in consideration of the uses of the project (summer, winter, other environmental conditions like fog). Although some utilities will pay you for excess power you produce, but they aren't obligated to do so by law. Basics of PV cells is that it is a semi-conductor electron pump that creates about .5 volts of DC power per cell, a number of cells are collected to create a module and a collection of modules is an array. Types of PVs are stand alones (sometimes with batteries) or Grid intertie (tied into the grid and the meter goes backwards), and they're made o f crystalline silicon (multicrystalline is the most popular right now), thin film, and concentrators or tracking devices to add greater efficiency. Building integrated PV means a low efficiency PV system that works with the building to provide additional comfort and collect power at the same time. After going over a normal set-up and some examples, we discussed the need for battery backup systems - 3-5 days of backup is typical and should provide power for the essential systems such as refrigerator, etc. There's a lot of estimating about installing a system - you have to estimate the load and the production, the available sunlight, and the reliability of the system. Have to know the difference between kW (unit of power) and kWh (energy). Factors that affect output include temperature, dirt, wiring losses, and AC to DC conversion. Then we discussed how to calculate energy. We ended the lecture with an introduction to solar thermal - heating hot water, space heating, or pool heating - and replaces the need for natural gas. Again, conservation takes precedence over efficiency. Systems are better than they used to be in the 70s. Types of thermal systems are batch heaters (collection and storage are together) and flat plate collectors (collection and