Large-Scale Solar Power System Design (GreenSource Books): An Engineering Guide for Grid-Connected Solar Power Generation (Mcgraw-hill's Greensource Series) 1st Edition

The Large Scale Solar Power System Design is a great guide that covers all aspects of the solar power from design to financial side of it. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Solar Power.

As someone involved with large-scale photovoltaic (commercial and utility-scale) projects, I purchased this book thinking that it would provide a solid engineering-level knowledge of large-scale PV systems design. While it covered some aspects reasonably well, it failed in several key areas, and unfortunately did not meet my expectations as a solar design engineer. Several reviewers have given 5 stars for this book which I think is overly generous; This book really deserves 2.5 to 3.0 stars for its lack of engineering rigor, inadequate coverage of several design areas, and over 200 pages wasted on useless filler material.Bottom line is that a solid engineering-level textbook on Large-Scale PV System Design is still badly needed, so the search continues.For further explanation - see below:First the positive aspects of this book:Chapter 1-4, 7, and 9 are for most part written well, although a few of these chapters (7 and 9) can use more detailed coverage of the subject.Now the disappointing aspects:1. First the book is quite short on engineering-level details, and very thin both on mathematical/engineering rigor (a few equations) and examples.2. Chapter 5, Solar Power Systems Cost Analysis - is okay but lacks any mathematical formulation for PV System life-cycle cost analysis and related ROI. There are no formulas. It does provide information on NREL_SAM (Solar Advisory Model) which you can also obtain from NREL website.3. Chapter 6, Solar Power System Design - which is one of the most important area of this "design book" is "far too short". It can easily be divided into at least two good sized chapters; one chapter covering electrical systems design, including main components sizing & BOS sizing; and the second chapter on mechanical system analysis and design, including wind load analysis of panels and stress/fatigue/vibrational/thermal analysis of components, bolts/attachments and structures.4. The book has at least one chapter that is not needed for this large-scale "PV focused" sytem design book. That is chapter 11, Solar Thermal System. The brief chapter (17 pages wasted) covers concnetrated solar thermal power (CSP). Although it is only 17 pages but still this book is geared towards PV Systems alone. The text book title should really state Large-Scale "Photovoltaic" System Design instead of the current title (Large-Scale "Solar" Power System Design), since solar also covers CSP which is a broad subject, and would require a separate book.5. From page 423 to page 659, it is filled with completely unnecessary material which can be easily acquired through manufacturer websites and other solar energy websites. The author could have provided the web-links of these sites on one page and saved over 200 pages of the text. This issue is also covered by one or two other reviewers (see 1-star rating review).

I have to agree with the reviewers who are critical of this book. The author spends way too much ink providing data sets where he could have simply given a URL and literally halved the size and money of this book. It smacks of providing data "by the pound" to command a higher price point for the book.The auther does have some good material but really doesn't begin the book with a Macro overview of what the book will attempt to do or what the reader should really glean from the book. Really, it doesn't seem like the author really thought about the reader when writing this book at all.Please read the other more articulate critiques of this book. If you are not building large-scale systems in California then with all the useless data posted plus CA rules and regs (which could also have been linked by URL), then 50% of this book is an utter waste.Also, the author hardly describes the real issues facing in the construction phase of building a system. Another reviewer commented that there is also a paucity of information for engineering large scale solar as well.In the end, it does seem like the author is relaying rather wonkish stuff that many people could scratch out on the internet and completely negates the "real" issues that confront practitioners of large scale solar (IE case studies, most problems large scale systems face are..., tips for efficient construction, personnel must do's and don'ts, personnel training, site security, common compliance issues, common mistakes made constructing large-scale systems, back-end monitoring strategies, etc., etc.). The other reviewer is right when he says that the solar community really needs good well-thought material on this topic.

I bought this book after reading the reviews here. Even from a person with a Ph.D.I wonder how good these reviews are ,simply people who are perhaps friends of the author could give an excellent view. When a book of 660 pages includes a 200 page ( anyone could find online) solar panel wattage & other info in a column format and another 100 pages of tables anyone on internet could find out ( latitude/longitude) that itself tells you the rest of the content of the book.If this is a book used by our college students & with over $70 price , god save the kids !!!. What a waste. I also brought a book from the local library called "Photovoltaic Systems" by Jim Dunlop. This is very good book. After receiving the "large scale solar power systems designs" by Peter Gevorkian just now, i ordered the other book. Hope I could sell this useless stack of paper to someone. using 50% of the pages for easy to find solar panel manufacturer data & tables, it seems to me the author has tried to increase the number of pages of this book rather than adding useful material.

Very good

fine

Just as describe. Perfect

This is a good start, however the book is filled with errors and is out of date in terms of installation best practices.The last 3rd of the book is a list of PV module manufacturers which is not relevant as many of these companies no longer are in business. Would be worth getting if you can find a used copy for cheap but you end up questioning the accuracy of the book.