GLOSSARY
- Biomass
- any material, excluding fossil fuels, that was or is a living
organism and can potentially be used as fuel.
- British Thermal Unit (BTU)
- a unit of energy; 1055 Joules is equal to 1 BTU.
- Capacity
- The maximum power that a machine such as an electrical
generator or a system such as a transmission line can safely
produce or handle.
- Capacity Factor
- The amount of energy a facility generates in one year divided
by the total amount it could generate if it ran at full capacity.
A capacity factor of one implies that the system ran at full
capacity the entire year; a typical wind farm will operate at 0.25
capacity factor, or 25%.
- Diffuse Radiation
- Scattered radiation from the sun that comes from all portions
of the sky.
- Forest Residues
- unused wood in the forest including logging residues, cull
trees, dead trees, and annual mortality.
- Geopressured Geothermal
- type of geothermal resource occurring in deep basins in which
fluid is under pressure.
- Geothermal Energy
- heat transferred from the earth's interior to underground
rocks or water located relatively close to the earth's surface.
- GIS
- Geographic Information System.
- Hot Dry Rock (HDR)
- heat energy residing in impermeable crystalline rock.
Fracturing creates permeability to allow the circulation of water
to remove the heat.
- Insolation
- Amount of solar energy reaching a surface per unit of time.
- Joule
- A standard international unit of energy; 1055 Joules is equal
to 1 BTU.
- Kilowatt (kW)
- One thousand Watts; the power requirement of ten 100 W light
bulbs.
- Kilowatt-hour (kWh)
- A unit of energy equal to one kW applied for one hour; running
a one kW hair dryer for one hour would dissipate one kWh of
electrical energy as heat.
- Kinetic Energy
- Energy possessed by virtue of an object's motion.
- Megawatt (MW)
- One million Watts; a modern coal plant will have a capacity of
about 1,000 MW.
- Megajoule (MJ)
- One million Joules.
- Municipal Solid Waste (MSW)
- urban refuse collected for landfilling and including paper,
organic matter, metals, plastic, etc., but not certain
agricultural or industrial wastes.
- Ocean Thermal Gradient
- Differences in the temperature of layers of the ocean
potentially useful for running a heat engine.
- Passive Systems
- Systems using the sun's energy without mechanical systems.
- Photosynthesis
- the biochemical process that utilizes radiant energy from
sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water
in the presence of chlorophyll.
- Photovoltaic Conversion
- Use of semi-conductors or other devices that convert solar
radiation (phototons) directly to electricity.
- Quad (Q)
- Unit of energy equivalent to 1015 BTU.
- Salinity Gradient
- a change in salinity between bodies of water or layers within
a body of water.
- Solar Ponds
- Ponds of stratified water that collect and retain heat.
- Tidal Range
- the vertical distance between the high and low tide.
- Watt (W)
- A standard unit of power defined as one Joule of energy
transferred or dissipated in one second.
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