went into decline in World War II because of a shortage of copper, the key component of the process (Sklar and Scheinkopf, 1991: 9-10).
Solar thermal technologies all convert the energy of the sun's heat into usable medium- or high-temperature heat or electricity. Concentrated sunlight is a versatile and high quality form of energy, and so solar thermal technology has numerous applications, primarily industrial and commercial uses of process heat and electrical power generation. This is a technology that has advanced rapidly in recent years and that is now providing economical power to the California electricity system, as an example. In solar thermal systems, solar collectors with mirrored surfaces concentrate light onto a receiver, which in turn heats a liquid that drives a turbine generator and produces electricity with an overall efficiency of more than 20 percent. Excess energy so produced can then be stored relatively inexpensively for later use. There are two categories of systems, the central receivers and th
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