One of the most attractive uses of solar energy is obtaining potable water from brakish water. On a small scale, several countries were producing solar stills (Sayigh and El-Salam, 1976, Bartoli et al., 1975, Boldrin and Scalabrin, 1975). The yield of these small stills is about 3-5 l/m2/day and their cost is $50-150, which is […]

The majority of solar energy work has been recently devoted to the generation of electricity and its cost analysis. Figure 21.4 shows the cost of power generation ($/kW) for different types of fuel (Anderson, 1975), while Fig. 21.5 shows the electricity cost per kilowatt hour versus the load factor for various means of electricity generation. […]

The cost of conventional heating is shown in Fig. 21.3, solar heating costs are much less than that if the initial cost of the collector is excluded. At the present moment, many solar heating/cooling systems are available in the market in the U. S. Alcone (1975) presented the cost of such a system in Table […]

These were well received all over the world. In India, the cost of a solar stove is reported to be $8 and similarly, in Lebanon. In the U. S., Daniels used a plastic stove which costs about $2. In Burma, a do-it-yourself solar stove kit costs about $0.50, but involves about 8 h of manual […]

Up to 1960, there was only one company producing solar pumps. This was the Somor Corporation in Italy. Several sizes were produced by this Company, namely, from 0.1 to 5 hp. Their prices were about $1000/hp. A French Company is now in operation, CFP/TOTAL of Paris (Clemot and Fiatte, 1975), which produces various sizes of […]

Several solar devices are now available in the market and these devices vary in price from place to place and country to country. Their efficiency also varies. Therefore it is difficult to name a fixed price for a solar article, however, a broad line can be drawn regarding the market for each kind of solar […]

The fact that solar energy is free does not mean that it will automatically have a low utilizing cost. The interest lies in generating, say, electricity, and the equipment that converts solar energy to electricity through some devices (see Chapter 14 and Fig. 21.1) has to be of low or reasonable cost before it can […]

A. A. M. SAYIGH MECHANICAL ENGINEERING DEPARTMENT COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING RIYADH UNIVERSITY RIYADH, SAUDI ARABIA 21.1 INTRODUCTION Solar energy research has been confined to the enthusiastic and pure researcher since 1870. Since then several solar energy utilizing devices have been made and tested, such as solar stoves, solar heaters, solar stills, solar dryers, solar refrigerators, […]