There are 1.3 billion people living without electricity, a large portion of which is in the bottom of the economic pyramid. Rural electrification via photovoltaic systems is one possible solution to alleviate their poverty. The aim of this article is to qualitatively investigate the potential for the transition towards off-grid photovoltaic systems. Two interrelated aspects are specifically inv...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the purchase power of the higher education system to catalyze the economy of scale necessary to ensure market competitiveness for solar photovoltaic electricity. Design/methodology/approach – The approach used here was to first determine the demand necessary to construct “Solar City factories”, factories that possess equipment and pro...

it is expected that residential units may replace   traditional heat and power production systems with cogeneration ones. among the different cogeneration systems, fuel cell based systems are a suitable choice due to their high efficiency, high power density, low emission and low noise. in this paper, a cogeneration system based on solid oxide fuel cells is examined. the system, including the f...

The power generation from renewable power sources is variable in nature, and may contain unacceptable fluctuations, which can be alleviated by using energy storage systems. However, the cost of batteries and their limited lifetime are serious disadvantages. To solve these problems, an improvement consisting in the collaborative association of batteries and supercapacitors has been studied. Neve...

Water-based polymer nanoparticle dispersions (solar paint) offer the prospect of addressing two of the main challenges associated with printing large area organic photovoltaic devices; namely, how to control the nanoscale architecture of the active layer and eliminate the need for hazardous organic solvents during device fabrication. In this paper, we review progress in the field of nanoparticu...