Photovoltaics for the technically ungifted: academics with two left hands and everybody else - Tapa blanda

There is an enormous number of publications about photovoltaics but there are very few addressing normal people in an understandable language. This book explains how one can build a photovoltaic installation which produces electricity for less than 3 Euro cents per kWh (including the costs for the credit; not everywhere in the world and only when the sun shines; electricity for the night costs about 10 cents more). Everybody who knows which way round to grasp a screw driver is able to set up a photovoltaic installation. The back of an envelope should be big enough to make the calculation whether such an installation pays or not. The book addresses private persons and the owners of small companies who are thinking about producing their own electricity; so we are talking mostly about 'islands' and 'peninsulas' and you will not find any further information about subsidies and taxes. Photovoltaics have the potential to stop the climate change. The book shows (alongside) how this could work out.

Jürgen D. Henning qualified after completing a seven year study in electronic engineering in Germany, with an emphasis on measurement, regulation and computer science, and then spent quite a few years working in the electronics and computer industry. About 20 years ago he started off on his motorbike (a BMW R80GS) in order to find out - in the course of a year and a half - whether the world is really round (he said later: that was by far the best thing I ever did in my life). After this he spent about ten years in Spain. Round about a year ago an intensive e-mail exchange started with a friend of him in Spain (he owns a small photovoltaic installation and is himself a writer). So Jürgen Henning talked his friend into starting a book about photovoltaics for technically ungifted people and supported him with background material. When this project outgrew his friend (who had some other urgent matters to attend to) he took over. The mix of our two originally completely different styles increased the readability of this book considerably.