Earthquake engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that designs and analyzes structures, such as buildings and bridges, with earthquakes in mind. Its overall goal is to make such structures more resistant to earthquakes. An earthquake engineer aims to construct structures that will not be damaged in minor shaking and will avoid serious damage or collapse in a major earthquake. A properly engineered structure does not necessarily have to be extremely strong or expensive. It has to be properly designed to withstand the seismic effects while sustaining an acceptable level of damage.
A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. The electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct current (DC) electricity, which can be used to power various devices or be stored in batteries. Solar panels are also known as solar cell panels, solar electric panels, or PV modules.
Light tubes are structures that transmit or distribute natural or artificial light for the purpose of illumination and are examples of optical waveguides.
Solar shingles, also called photovoltaic shingles, are solar panels designed to look like and function as conventional roofing materials, such as asphalt shingle or slate, while also producing electricity. Solar shingles are a type of solar energy solution known as building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV).
An earthquake warning system or earthquake alarm system is a system of accelerometers, seismometers, communication, computers, and alarms that is devised for notifying adjoining regions of a substantial earthquake while it is in progress. This is not the same as earthquake prediction, which is currently incapable of producing decisive event warnings.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2023, utility-scale solar power generated 164.5 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 3.9% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 238 TWh.
A photovoltaic system, also called a PV system or solar power system, is an electric power system designed to supply usable solar power by means of photovoltaics. It consists of an arrangement of several components, including solar panels to absorb and convert sunlight into electricity, a solar inverter to convert the output from direct to alternating current, as well as mounting, cabling, and other electrical accessories to set up a working system. It may also use a solar tracking system to improve the system's overall performance and include an integrated battery.
Sopogy was a solar thermal technology supplier founded in 2002 at the Honolulu, Hawaii-based clean technology incubator known as Energy Laboratories. The company began its research on concentrating solar thermal energy to produce solar steam and thermal heat for absorption chillers or industrial process heat. The company has also developed applications that incorporate its solar collectors to generate electricity and desalination. Sopogy's name origin comes from industry key words "So" from solar "po" from power and "gy" from energy and technology. The company has its OEM and IPP sales teams along with research and development located in Honolulu, and in 2006 expanded its manufacturing, C&I and oil and gas sales teams in its Silicon Valley facility. Pacific Business News and Greentech Media reported that the VC-funded micro-concentrator solar power firm was shutting down operations based on statements from its President David Fernandez, however Hitachi Power Systems acquired Sopogy in a private transaction in 2014.
BrightSource Energy, Inc. is an Oakland, California based, corporation that designs, builds, finances, and operates utility-scale solar power plants. Greentech Media ranked BrightSource as one of the top 10 greentech startups in the world in 2008.
eSolar is a privately held company that develops concentrating solar power (CSP) plant technology. The company was founded by the Pasadena-based business incubator Idealab in 2007 as a developer of CSP plant technology. The company aims to develop a low cost alternative to fossil fuels through a combination of small heliostats, modular architecture, and a high-precision sun-tracking system. In October 2017, an article in GreenTech Media suggested that eSolar ceased business in late 2016.
Leonard "Lynn" L. Northrup Jr. was an American engineer who was a pioneer of the commercialization of solar thermal energy. Influenced by the work of John Yellott, Maria Telkes, and Harry Tabor, Northrup's company designed, patented, developed and manufactured some of the first commercial solar water heaters, solar concentrators, solar-powered air conditioning systems, solar power towers and photovoltaic thermal hybrid systems in the United States. The company he founded became part of ARCO Solar, which in turn became BP Solar, which became the largest solar energy company in the world. Northrup was a prolific inventor with 14 US patents.
IBC Solar is a company based in Germany which specializes in custom solar panel installations (photovoltaics). The company was established in 1982.
A community solar project, farm or garden is a solar power installation that accepts capital from and provides output credit and tax benefits to multiple customers, including individuals, businesses, nonprofits, and other investors. Participants typically invest in or subscribe to a certain kW capacity or kWh generation of remote electrical production. The project's power output is credited to investors or subscribers in proportion to their investment, with adjustments to reflect ongoing changes in capacity, technology, costs and electricity rates. Community solar provides direct access to the renewable energy to customers who cannot install it themselves. Companies, cooperatives, governments or non-profits operate the systems.
Amonix, Inc. is a solar power system developer based in Seal Beach, California. The company manufactures concentrator photovoltaic (CPV) products designed for installation in sunny and dry climates. CPV products convert sunlight into electrical energy in the same way that conventional solar photovoltaic technology does, except that they use optics to focus the solar radiation before the light is absorbed by solar cells. According to a comparative study of energy production of solar technologies, CPV systems require no water for energy production and produce more energy per megawatt (MW) installed than traditional PV systems. Amonix has nearly 70 megawatts of CPV solar power systems deployed globally, including Southwestern U.S. and Spain. In May 2012, the Alamosa Solar Generating project, owned and operated by Cogentrix Energy, began commercial operation. This is the largest CPV power plant in the world and is expected to produce enough clean renewable energy per year to power more than 6,500 homes and will avoid the emissions of over 43,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The Alamosa Solar Generating Project is supported by a power purchase agreement (PPA), which is a long-term agreement to sell the power it will generate. Under the project's PPA, the Public Service Company of Colorado will buy the power generated by the solar facility for the next 20 years. In July 2012, Amonix set the world record for photovoltaic module efficiency at 33.5% under nominal operating conditions, verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In April 2013, Amonix broke the record set in July 2012, demonstrating photovoltaic module efficiency at 34.9% under normal concentrator standard operating conditions, also verified by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. In August 2013, Amonix announced it had achieved a 35.9% photovoltaic module efficiency rating under concentrator standard test conditions (CSTC) as calculated by NREL. In June, 2014, the assets of Amonix were acquired by Arzon Solar, LLC for the purpose of continued development of CPV technology and products.
Photovoltaic mounting systems are used to fix solar panels on surfaces like roofs, building facades, or the ground. These mounting systems generally enable retrofitting of solar panels on roofs or as part of the structure of the building. As the relative costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) modules has dropped, the costs of the racks have become more important and for small PV systems can be the most expensive material cost. This has caused an interest in small users deploying a DIY approach. Due to these trends, there has been an explosion of new racking trends. These include non-optimal orientations and tilt angles, new types of roof-mounts, ground mounts, canopies, building integrated, shading, vertical mounted and fencing systems.
Based in the United States and founded in 2001, HelioPower develops proprietary projects with third-party offtakers and currently owns and operates more than 100 energy systems at facilities such as the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose and Ronald McDonald House in San Diego.
Thomas Linn Dinwoodie is a cleantech entrepreneur, inventor, and founder of SunPower Corporation Systems. He holds a long-standing interest in accelerating the transition to clean energy and other climate-sustaining practices. Dinwoodie is also an architect.
Solmetric Corporation, based in Sebastopol, California, is a manufacturer of solar test and measurement equipment and developer of solar design software. It was founded in 2005 and is best known for its shade measurement tool, the SunEye, and its I-V curve tracer, the PV Analyzer. The award-winning SunEye shade tool is used primarily by residential solar installers. It tells the user when and where shadows will fall so that solar modules can be placed to maximize energy harvest. The PV Analyzer is an I-V curve tracer. It is used for commissioning and troubleshooting commercial and utility scale PV systems.
8minute Solar Energy is an American photovoltaic (PV) developer of utility-scale PV power plants and energy storage.
Thomas Hubertus Büttgenbach is an American businessman in the solar industry. He is the co-founder, CEO and president of 8minute Solar Energy, an independent solar and storage developer.
