Solar energy: Potential and future prospects

Ehsanul Kabira, Pawan Kumarb, Sandeep Kumarc, Adedeji A. Adelodund, Ki-Hyun

Kime.
The development of novel solar power technologies is considered to be one of many
key solutions toward fulfilling a worldwide increasing demand for energy. Rapid
growth within the field of solar technologies is nonetheless facing various technical
barriers, such as low solar cell efficiencies, low performing balance-ofsystems
(BOS), economic hindrances (e.g., high upfront costs and a lack of financing
mechanisms), and institutional obstacles (e.g., inadequate infrastructure and a
shortage of skilled manpower). The merits and demerits of solar energy technologies
are both discussed in this article. A number of technical problems affecting
renewable energy research are also highlighted, along with beneficial interactions
between regulation policy frameworks and their future prospects. In order to help
open novel routes with regard to solar energy research and practices, a future
roadmap for the field of solar research is discussed.

Keywords: Solar energy Technologies Research Renewable energy Policy

frameworks

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser.

Energy and exergy analyses of various typical solar energy applications:

A comprehensive review

Sunil Kumar Sansaniwal⁎, Vashimant Sharma, Jyotirmay Mathur.

The overuse of fossil fuels in real life applications has caused their rapid depletion
and fast climate change due to global warming and thus access to eco-friendly
energy resources has become essential to meet the growing demand of clean
energy. With this view, solar energy has proven to be an effective alternative and
clean source of energy for the sustainable development of the society worldwide.
Solar energy is a cheap, abundant and everlasting source of renewable energy and
thus it can be integrated with different systems deals with energy consumption to
overcome the dependency of present society on conventional fuels. Such integration
of solar energy has given an opportunity for several studies based on the energy
and exergy approaches. The energy analysis is very crucial in the study of process
effectiveness while the exergetic analysis is another important tool to investigate the
realistic behaviour of process involving various energy losses and internal
irreversibility. The main objective of this article is to bring out valuable
recommendations for wide exploitation of solar energy systems for different
applications, from a thermodynamics perspective. Therefore, the present article has
summarized the previous findings on energy and exergy analyses of different solar
energy systems (solar drying, solar air conditioning and refrigeration, solar water
heating, solar cooking and solar power generation through solar photovoltaic and
concentrated solar power techniques used for various heat and power
generationapplications).

Keywords:
Solar energy
Energy and exergy analyses
Solar drying
Solar refrigeration and air conditioning
Solar water heating
Solar cooking
Solar photovoltaic
Concentrated solar energy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser.

AJP

The calculated photon: Visualization of a quantum field

Martin Ligare and Ryan Oliveri

We calculate spatial localization and phase properties of spontaneously emitted

photons. Our model is simple yet fully quantized: the emitting atom is a two-level
atom located in a one-dimensional multimode optical cavity. Although the photon
state vector does not have a position-space representation, the expectation value of
the square of the electric field operator ~intensity! Is spatially localized and this
pattern shifts at the speed of light. The emitted photon exhibits classical-like phase
properties in the intensity expectation value when it ‘‘interferes with itself’’ after
reflection. The phase properties of the emitted radiation are also evident at times
sufficiently long for the radiation to have returned to the emitting atom before the
decay of excited atomic state is complete.