Sørensen B. Renewable energy. Its physics, engineering, use, environmental impacts, economy and planning aspects

3rd edition. — Academic Press / Elsevier Science, 2004. — 945 p. — ISBN 0126561508.Renewable energy is the collective name for a number of energy resources available to man on Earth. Their conversion has always played an important role for the inhabitants of the planet, and apart from a period of negligible length – relative to evolutionary and historical time scales – the renewable energy sources have been the only ones accessible to mankind.
Yet the study of renewable energy resources, their origin and conversion, may at present be characterised as an emerging science. During the past fifty years of scientific and technological revolution, much more effort has been devoted to the extraction and utilisation of non-renewable energy resources (fuels), than to the renewable ones. Only very recently have funds been made available to re-establish renewable energy research and development, and it is still unclear whether the technologies based on renewable energy sources will become able to constitute the backbone of future energy supply systems.
The purpose of the present book is to provide an incentive as well as a basis of reference for those working within the field of renewable energy. The discontinuity between earlier and present work on renewable energy, and the broadness of disciplines required for assessing many questions related to the use of renewable energy, have created a need for a comprehensive reference book, covering methods and principles, rather than specific engineering prescriptions of passing interest in a rapidly developing field.