Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy, and solar architecture. It is an essential source of renewable energy, and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on how they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power, and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light-dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.
A Trombe wall is a massive equator-facing wall that is painted a dark color in order to absorb thermal energy from incident sunlight and covered with a glass on the outside with an insulating air-gap between the wall and the glaze. A Trombe wall is a passive solar building design strategy that adopts the concept of indirect-gain, where sunlight first strikes a solar energy collection surface in contact with a thermal mass of air. The sunlight absorbed by the mass is converted to thermal energy (heat) and then transferred into the living space.
An Earthship is a style of architecture developed in the late 20th century to early 21st century by architect Michael Reynolds. Earthships are designed to behave as passive solar earth shelters made of both natural and upcycled materials such as earth-packed tires. Earthships may feature a variety of amenities and aesthetics, and are designed to withstand the extreme temperatures of a desert, managing to stay close to 70 °F (21 °C) regardless of outside weather conditions. Earthship communities were originally built in the desert of northern New Mexico, near the Rio Grande, and the style has spread to small pockets of communities around the globe, in some cases in spite of legal opposition to its construction and adoption.
Sim Van der Ryn is an American architect, researcher and educator. Van der Ryn's professional interest has been applying principles of physical and social ecology to architecture and environmental design.
A zome is a building designed using geometries different from of a series of rectangular boxes, used in a typical house or building. The word zome was coined in 1968 by Nooruddeen Durkee, combining the words dome and zonohedron. One of the earliest models became a large climbing structure at the Lama Foundation.
Drop City was a counterculture artists' community that formed near the town of Trinidad in southern Colorado in 1960. Abandoned by 1979, Drop City became known as the first rural "hippie commune".
Building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) are photovoltaic materials that are used to replace conventional building materials in parts of the building envelope such as the roof, skylights, or façades. They are increasingly being incorporated into the construction of new buildings as a principal or ancillary source of electrical power, although existing buildings may be retrofitted with similar technology. The advantage of integrated photovoltaics over more common non-integrated systems is that the initial cost can be offset by reducing the amount spent on building materials and labor that would normally be used to construct the part of the building that the BIPV modules replace. In addition, BIPV allows for more widespread solar adoption when the building's aesthetics matter and traditional rack-mounted solar panels would disrupt the intended look of the building.
The passive solar design of buildings includes consideration of their orientation to the sun and their thermal mass, factors which have been incorporated to a greater or lesser extent in vernacular architecture for thousands of years. Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese were the first to refine and develop the basic principles of passive solar design, but European technological advances were largely abandoned after the Fall of Rome. It was not until the 20th century that interest in the principles of passive solar design had a resurgence in Europe and the U.S.A., with architects such as George F. Keck and Frank Lloyd Wright. In the 21st century, worldwide endeavours to reduce power consumption have kept the interest in passive solar technology alive.
Arthur Thomas Brown was an American architect who is remembered as “Tucson’s pioneer of solar design.”
Solar architecture is an architectural approach that takes in account the Sun to harness clean and renewable solar power. It is related to the fields of optics, thermics, electronics and materials science. Both active and passive solar housing skills are involved in solar architecture.
George Frederick Keck (1895-1980) was an American modernist architect based in Chicago, Illinois. He was later assisted in his practice by his brother William Keck to form the firm of Keck & Keck.
John Ingle Yellott was an American engineer recognized as a pioneer in passive solar energy, and an inventor with many patents to his credit. In his honor the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Solar Division confers a biannual "John I. Yellott Award" which "recognizes ASME members who have demonstrated sustained leadership within the Solar Energy Division, have a reputation for performing high-quality solar energy research and have made significant contributions to solar engineering through education, state or federal government service or in the private sector."
The Heliotrope is an environmentally friendly housing project by German architect Rolf Disch. There are three such buildings in Germany. The first experimental version was built in 1994 as the architect's home in Freiburg im Breisgau, while the other two were used as exhibition buildings for the Hansgrohe company in Offenburg and a dentist's lab in Hilpoltstein in Bavaria.
George Oscar Löf was an American engineer and inventor who was best known for his contributions to solar energy research. "Nobody played a more enduring role in the 20th century solar house movement than George Löf."
Solar air heating is a solar thermal technology in which the energy from the sun, insolation, is captured by an absorbing medium and used to heat air. Solar air heating is a renewable energy heating technology used to heat or condition air for buildings or process heat applications. It is typically the most cost-effective out of all the solar technologies, especially in commercial and industrial applications, and it addresses the largest usage of building energy in heating climates, which is space heating and industrial process heating.
The Solar Building, located in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was the world's first commercial building to be heated primarily by solar energy. It was built in 1956 to house the engineering firm of Bridgers & Paxton, who were responsible for the heating system design. The novel building received widespread attention, with articles in national publications like Life and Popular Mechanics, and was the subject of a National Science Foundation-funded research project in the 1970s. It was added to the New Mexico State Register of Cultural Properties in 1985 and the National Register of Historic Places in 1989, only 33 years after it was built.
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.
William Lumpkins (1909-2000) was an American artist and architect best known for his abstract watercolors and pioneering solar adobe architecture. He was a founding member of the Transcendental Painting Group and cofounder of the Santa Fe Art Institute with Pony Ault.
Zometool is a construction set toy that had been created by a collaboration of Steve Baer, artist Clark Richert, Paul Hildebrandt, and co-inventor Marc Pelletier. It is manufactured by Zometool, Inc. According to the company, Zometool was primarily designed for kids. Zometool has also been used in other fields including mathematics and physics. For example, aperiodic tilings such as Penrose tilings can be modeled using Zometool. The learning tool was designed by inventor-designer Steve Baer, his wife Holly and others.
