Renewable Energy - selected issues vol I

Research on Renewable Energy contains several aspects of scientific interest, while also presenting political and ethical implications. In fact, the reduction of the cost of energy obtained by using renewable sources is a way to reduce poverty in disadvantaged countries and regions. Many renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, differently from fossil fuel resources located in the subsoil, are available all around the world. With reference to electricity production, the reduction of the combustion of fossil fuels lessens the concentration of carbon dioxide, CO2, in the atmosphere, opposing the increase of the earth's average temperature. Moreover, many of the products originated from the combustion of fossil fuel resources are detrimental to people's health. From the scientific point of view, several challenges come from the intermittent nature of energy sources such as wind, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal. These challenges are addressed with research on power electronics converters, storage systems with their respective modelling and control algorithms, Artificial Intelligence techniques, new materials and production technologies, numerical analysis techniques and many others, in a multidisciplinary approach. In the future, this research has the aim of reducing costs and finding alternative energy sources that are competitive with fossil fuels. Consequently, the efforts of the scientific community will contribute to improve the quality of life in the planet. With these objectives, hundreds of researchers, scientists, and engineers attend the International Conference on Renewable Energy and Power Quality (ICREPQ) annually. This book summarizes ten years of contributions to the topics described above. It contains a selection of the best papers presented at the ICREPQ conferences from 2003 to 2012. These contributions have been selected by a team of voluntary reviewers, with two to four reviewers assigned to each paper. At the end of this process only about 5% of all presented papers were selected. Considering each paper had been reviewed before, to be accepted for the conference, the selected papers represent "the best of the best". Moreover, the authors have modified and updated the original contribution to be included as a chapter of this book. The contributors to this book span the globe, with about 200 authors from 20 different countries, some of whom are the leading authorities in their areas of expertise.