Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com

Average Customer Rating:

Very comprehensive, but difficult read

Customer Rating:

It's been a while since I read this book, so I can't remember my first impressions, except it was a pretty difficult read. It's quite in-depth. It has a lot of physics and chemistry in it. It is pretty comprehensive, covering small-scale renewable energy topics such as solar thermal for heating homes, as well as larger scale technologies for power such as hydro. It also provides scientific background on thermodynamics, fluid mechanics and even photosynthesis. The diagrams and illustrations are good. My biggest complaint were that the questions in the back of each chapter were way too hard. Even my lecturer said he couldn't do them.

Very complete book on renewables

Customer Rating:

Excellent book that gave me exactly what I was looking for: a good overview of the different renewable energy ressources but also a detailed development of the basic engineering priciples. The vocabulary used is fairly simple and the book is reasonably understandable. Most equations are described into detail and are not too difficult to follow. Each chapter finishes with a detailled bibliography for those who want some more "in depth" reading. The only point that, I think, could be improved, is the chapter on photolvoltaic cell. It is heavy to read (but the author gives a warning at the beguining) and not always well described.