COMPARISION OF ENERGY CONVERSION EFFICIENCY OF WIND GENERATORS AND SOLAR PHOTO VOLTAIC SYSTEMS

Abstract

In the scenario of energy crises, it is very important to go for sustainable reliable and environmental friendly energy resources. The fossil fuels are becoming scarce and it's use in producing electrical energy is causing irreparable damage to the environment. This situation has led to search for renewable energy resources such as solar, wind, biomass, geothermal etc. Out of these wind and solar energy resources are available in abundance. There has been worldwide effort to harness solar energy and wind energy for meeting electrical energy requirements, though in a limited scale. The major impediment to large scale exploitation of such energy sources have been the cost factor which is presently higher than the cost of electrical energy from conventional sources. Since the cost of any commodity is based on market forces, using the cost criteria for influencing any decision which has a long term effect, may not be a very sound proposition. Hence in the quest for some other criteria which may fulfill the requisite conditions of soundness of basis for comparisons energy conversion performance appeared to be one of the most promising and logical one......