Steve Mills

Biodiesel. A fuel produced from oilseed crops such as soy, rapeseed (canola) and palm oil, and from other oil sources such as waste cooking oil and animal fats. Biodiesel is used in diesel engines installed in cars, trucks, buses and other vehicles, as well as in stationary heat and power applications.…

The fibrous matter which remains after extraction of sugar from sugar cane

A biological process which produces a gas principally composed of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) otherwise known as biogas. Organic material and/or waste is converted into biogas in a digester. Suitable feedstocks include agricultural residues, animal wastes, food industry wastes, sewage sludge, purpose-grown green crops and the organic components…

A wind turbine is a rotating machine which transfers kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy. If the mechanical energy is instead converted to electricity, the machine may be called a wind turbine generator (WTG)

A hybrid technology of solar PV with battery storage. Other types of renewable energy-plus-storage plants also exist.

A type of solar thermal collector which is straight in one dimension and curved as a parabola in the other two, lined with a polished metal mirror. The sunlight which enters the mirror parallel to its plane of symmetry is focused along the focal line, where objects are positioned which…

A type of solar furnace which uses a tower to receive the focused sunlight. It uses an array of flat, movable mirrors (called heliostats) to focus the sun's rays upon a collector tower (the target). Early designs used these focused rays to heat water, and used the resulting steam to…

A very small solar PV system – such as a solar lamp or an information and communication technology (ICT) appliance – with a power output of 1-10 watts which typically uses a voltage of up to 12 volts.

A device used for converting solar energy to thermal energy (heat), typically used for domestic water heating but also used for space heating, for industrial process heat or to drive thermal cooling machines. Evacuated tube and flat plate collectors that operate with water or a water/glycol mixture as the heat-transfer…

The direct conversion of solar radiation into electricity by the interaction of light with the electrons in a semiconductor device or cell. Solar PV cells are constructed from semiconducting materials that use sunlight to separate electrons from atoms to create an electric current. Modules are formed by interconnecting individual cells.…