Introduction to Energy, Renewable Energy and Electrical Engineering. Ewald F. Fuchs
This text teaches by example. The book's innovative approach applies to 125 application examples and 157 problems highlight the teaching approach so that STEM students and professionals can better understand the electrical engineering and sciences associated with renewable energy issues by working through them. 449 reference citations are listed, which permit the reader to further delve into renewable energy projects. PSPICE and Mathematica software programs are included, for which personal computers suffice. Finally, the ~309‐page Instructor Manual provides solutions to the abovementioned problems.
Key Features
Real‐world energy measurements of a single‐family house with zero CO2 emissions including PV plant, groundwater–water heat pump, and groundwater cooling.
Design and performance of permanent‐magnet, induction, and synchronous machine drives for electric/hybrid automobiles and rail drives for starting, rated operation, flux weakening (FW), and compensation of flux weakening (CFW), with torque and speed control within wide speed range.
Design and performance of wind power and PV plants.
Introduction to magnetic field analyses based on finite‐element (FE) and finite‐difference (FD) methods with respect to permanent, induction, and synchronous machine drives.
Explanation of the nature of electricity and its manufacturing.
The book's novel approach applies to 125 practical application (example) problems with solutions.
157 problems at the end of chapters, with solutions in the ~309‐page Instructor Manual.
449 references – mostly journal articles and conference papers – as well as national and international standards and guidelines.
Preface
This book is intended for undergraduate students in non‐electrical engineering disciplines such as architectural, civil, and mechanical engineering, physics, and chemistry, as well as professionals in related fields who want to acquaint themselves with electrical engineering as applied to energy or specifically to renewable energy. It is assumed that the reader has good high school and/or applied mathematics educational college background such as Calculus III – covering vector analysis, complex numbers, differentiation, ordinary differential equations, and partial derivatives as well as integration. This text integrates energy and electrical engineering technologies, starting from basic principles and covering detailed analyses of renewable and electric energy issues and their solutions. Application examples highlight conventional and renewable energy problems. Software programs such as Mathematica and PSPICE (Personal Computer Simulation Program with Integrated Circuit Emphasis) are applied to solve component and system problems.
This book has evolved chiefly from the content of undergraduate electrical and energy engineering courses taught by the first author at the University of Colorado at Boulder and also draws on the second author's research experience at the University of California Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It is suitable for students who do not have educational background in energy and electrical engineering, as well as for practicing engineers who want to refresh and enhance their knowledge in these disciplines through 125 application example solutions, 157 problems and their solutions in the 309-page Instructor Manual, and more than 449 reference citations (mostly journal and conference papers, as well as national and international standards and guidelines). The extensive and detailed inclusion of practical applications stresses learning by example. Up‐to‐date references are given through the inclusion of Internet addresses. The “Système International” (SI) of units has been used throughout with some reference to the American/English system of units. Note that mass has the units (e.g. kg or lb) and weight has the units (e.g. kg‐force or lb‐force), where lb stands for “librum” as used in the English technical literature.
P.1 Key Features
Provides theoretical and practical insight into renewable energy problems.
125 practical application (example) problems with solutions, some implemented in PSPICE and Mathematica.
A total of 157 problems at the end of the chapters dealing with practical applications to electric, electronic, and renewable/energy engineering. Solutions to these problems are provided in a 309-page Solution Manual.
P.2 The Climate Dilemma
Figure P.1 illustrates the present warming distribution throughout the earth as published by National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center [1] where the measured global temperature during 2014 – indexed to the average values during the twentieth century – has increased by 0.68 °C. This average temperature increase, driven chiefly by human influence on the global carbon cycle as illustrated in Figure P.2 through deforestation and unrelenting emissions of greenhouse gases, captures our rationale for writing this book.
Figure P.1 Measured temperature anomalies during 2014 referring to the average values during the twentieth century, where the global average temperature in 2014 has increased [1] by 0.68 °C.
Figure P.2 CO2 variation and increase [2] during the past 800 000 years.
A 2008 paper by NASA scientist James Hansen [3] shows that the true gravity of the situation due to human, or anthropogenic, effects on the environment includes impacts on biophysical environments, biodiversity, and other natural resources. Hansen set out to determine what level of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) society should aim for “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted.” His climate models show that exceeding 350 parts per million (ppm) CO2 in the atmosphere would likely have catastrophic effects. We have already surpassed that limit because environmental monitoring showed concentrations of around 400 ppm in 2014. This is particularly problematic because CO2 and other greenhouse [4] gases (see Table P.1) remain in the atmosphere for a long time. Even if we shut down every fossil‐fueled power plant today, existing greenhouse gases will continue to warm the planet.
Table P.1 Greenhouse gases and their chemical formula, anthropogenic sources, atmospheric lifetime, and global warming potential (GWP) [4].
| Greenhouse gas | Chemical formula | Anthropogenic sources | Atmospheric lifetime [1](years) | GWP [2] (100‐year time horizon) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon dioxide | CO2 |
Fossil fuel combustion, |