Irrigated agriculture has the potential to alter regional to global climate significantly. We investigate how irrigation will affect regional climate in the future in an inland irrigation area of northern China, focusing on its effects on heat fluxes and near-surface temperature. Using the...

With the advent of new satellite technology, the radiative energy exchanges between Sun, Earth, and space may now be quantified accurately. Nevertheless, much less is known about the magnitude of the energy flows within the climate system and at the Earth’s surface, which cannot be directly...

Solar energy is a good solution for energy-deficiency problems, especially in regions such ‎as rural areas in the Middle East that have not been electrified yet or are ‎under electrification. In ‎this paper, with the aid of a Computational Fluid Dynamics simulation, we propose a ‎system...

This paper presents a dynamic simulation model and a parametric analysis of a solar-geothermal hybrid cogeneration plant based on an Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) powered by a medium-enthalpy geothermal resource and a Parabolic Trough Collector solar field. The fluid temperature supplying heat to...

Solar cells are a promising renewable, carbon-free electric energy resource to address the fossil fuel shortage and global warming. Energy conversion efficiencies around 40% have been recently achieved in laboratories using III-V semiconductor compounds as photovoltaic materials. This article...

A method is proposed that uses renewable solar energy to supply energy for the exploitation of marine gas hydrates using thermal stimulation. The system includes solar cells, which are installed on the platform and a distributor with electric heaters. The solar module is connected with electric...

Organic solar cells show great promise as an economically and environmentally friendly technology to utilize solar energy because of their simple fabrication processes and minimal material usage. However, new innovations and breakthroughs are needed for organic solar cell technology to become...

Silicon-based solar cells (SCs) promise to be an alternative energy source mainly due to: (1) a high efficiency-to-cost ratio, (2) the absence of environmental-degradation issues, and (3) great reliability. Transition from wafer-based to thin-film SC significantly reduces the cost of SCs,...

The reduction of electricity use for heating and domestic hot water in cold climates can be achieved by: (1) reducing the heating loads through the improvement of the thermal performance of house envelopes, and (2) using solar energy through a residential solar-based thermal storage system....

This paper proposes a new model for short-term forecasting of electric energy production in a photovoltaic (PV) plant. The model is called HIstorical SImilar MIning (HISIMI) model; its final structure is optimized by using a genetic algorithm, based on data mining techniques applied to...