Page - 17 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

Water and energy – for all 17 can be accomplished with many technologies, and a brief overview is given in Chapter 7. Part III (Chapters 8–11) describes renewable energy systems. Solar PV has the potential to be the dominating technology in warm and sunny countries, as described in Chapter 8. Wind energy can be an interesting complement to solar PV in many regions, discussed in Chapter 9. Solar cells of course only produce energy during the daytime, but wind and solar together can provide a more reliable source of energy. Still, both solar and wind are intermittent sources of energy; therefore, some storage of energy is needed in order to produce energy when there is no sunlight or wind. This storage challenge is the topic of Chapter 10. Finally, all components in a system producing clean water using renewable energy requires a system that can manage all the units and coordinate the energy flow in the system. This is described in Chapter 11. Part IV of the book “Applying renewable energy to water operations” (Chapters 12–14) concentrates on “soft” issues. Financing renewables in low-income areas is a crucial issue and may be the biggest obstacle to making clean energy and clean water accessible to all. This is illustrated in Chapter 12. Any electric power system needs a land area and this aspect is described in Chapter 13. A number of cases of water supply and treatment powered by renewable energy are described in Chapter 14. Part V looks at the future; in Chapter 15 we dare to predict the unpredictable, with a look forward to the year 2030. If you read it in a few years’ time it may look amusing. 1.8 FURTHER READING There is a lot of official material about the water and energy situation in the world. The UN reports UN Water (2014) and UN WWDR (2014) describe the water situation in the world and Olsson (2015) explains the many connections between water and energy. Access to electric power is described in World Bank (2017) and in IEA (2017a, 2017c). The two reports REN21 (2017a, 2017b) reveal a lot of information about renewable energy. The situation in Africa is particularly emphasised in IRENA (2016b, 2016d). Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user