BOOK REVIEWNOVEMBER 2012

I remember reading one of the first reviews of the iPad by Stephen Fry. Even though I can’t remember his exact words, he described browsing the internet on an iPad as a totally new experience. And I think he was right. Browsing the internet on an iPad makes you feel closer to a website, more

involved in what you see and read, and more in control.

I had the same experience when I opened Renewable Energy Sources, an iBook that is published specifically for the iPad.

In short it’s a book

which doesn’t stop at beautiful photographs but also treats you to some stunning dynamic visuals as well: the spinning globes showing irradiation, currents, wind resources, etc all over the world; or the fun 3D video models and visualisations of hydro power plants, biomass gasifiers, etc.

Renewable Energy SourcesBy D Vargoncik, M Sovadina, E BromovaPublished by: Simopt Reviewed by Jan Willem Bode

“In short it’s a book which doesn’t stop at beautiful photographs but also treats you to some stunning dynamic visuals as well.”

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This book really manages to take full advantage of being an iBook rather than a just a printed book, or a groovy looking pdf.

The authors and designers have really managed to make “reading” a totally new experience.

But hey, looks and fancy gadgets is not all that matters, content is important as well.

Renewable Energy Technologies is a book that does what it says on the cover. It provides a comprehensive, clear, and sometimes quirky overview of, indeed, the renewable energy technologies that are currently being developed and/or

implemented. What is interesting about the book is that they have managed on one hand to make the publication very accessible, but at the same time very comprehensive.

So, don’t expect detailed market overviews with complex tables and graphs, although there

are some tables with numbers (the highest hydro power dam, the largest wind farms, etc). But concepts, overviews and the way things work are much more important in this book than detailed statistics.

Every chapter starts with a little background information (what is wind, what’s the Beaufort

Scale, that kind of stuff) in a way that I think is very easily readable, and slowly (or sometimes a bit more quickly) goes a lot more in-depth - very soon you will be looking at a spinning globe showing the biggest wind farms in the world – or a cross section of the generator room of a wind turbine. But even when text does

“at the end of every chapter you can choose to do a quiz and test your knowledge, something I always fall for.”

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become complex, the 3D visuals and photographs guarantee that you keep on flicking through it. And then at the end of every chapter you can choose to do a quiz and test your knowledge, something I always fall for.

The text is similarly larded with interesting facts. For example, did you know that at the first World Fair (Exposition Universelle) in Paris, 1900, Rudolf Diesel presented his diesel engine running on peanut oil? Of course, you could have also read this little fact in

the 2050magazine.com special issue on biodiesel, but it is these kinds of little facts that are so useful when you’re chatting with friends in the pub. And you can keep a conversation at a cocktail party (when

was the last time you had one of those?) going for a bit more than 20 seconds after you have told people that you work in or are interested in renewable energy and climate change. So not only fun and informative,

these facts actually will improve your social life as well!

I planned to read this book in a way that you normally do for a book review. You look at the way it is organised, you check the table of contents, you flick through a couple of pages, and start writing. Instead, I was dragged into reading more, and more. And that is why it took me a lot longer to get this article published than anticipated.

I have read a lot of books about renewable energy, and with regards to content and categorisation, some less usual choices are being made. For example, most

books on renewables would tell you that all renewable energy except for geothermal, is in the end solar energy, a statement I have not found in this book. And I have not seen many books where nuclear fusion is presented in a chapter on energy from water.

It is a book for which I assume that the target audience is people with an interest in renewable energy, but also people that have already worked in the sector for a while. I dare to say that everyone will learn something from reading it, and it is fun as well.

The final chapter (Renewable Energy

Future) is perhaps too brief to do the topic full justice and in an ideal world I would have appreciated more examples and perhaps more explicit explanations to some of the graphs that are used.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed reading it and was able to learn from it. I have already told a number of people that they should go and get it. Shame it is only available in iBooks. Well worth £4.99 though.

To buy the book go to:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/renewable-energy-sources

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