Texas Renewable Energy Resources

Texas Renewable Energy Resources

Glossary

Biomass: any material, excluding fossil fuels, that was or is a living organism and can potentially be used as fuel.

British Thermal Unit (BTU): a unit of energy; 1055 Joules is equal to 1 BTU.

Capacity: the maximum power that a machine such as an electrical generator or a system such as a transmission line can safely produce or handle.

Capacity Factor: the amount of energy a facility generates in one year divided by the total amount it could generate if it ran at full capacity. A capacity factor of one implies that the system ran at full capacity the entire year; a typical wind farm will operate at 0.25 capacity factor, or 25%.

Diffuse Radiation: scattered radiation from the sun that comes from all portions of the sky.

Forest Residues: unused wood in the forest including logging residues, cull trees, dead trees, and annual mortality.

Geopressured Geothermal: type of geothermal resource occurring in deep basins in which fluid is under pressure.

Geothermal Energy: geothermal energy heat transferred from the earth's interior to underground rocks or water located relatively close to the earth's surface.

GIS: geographic Information System.

Hot Dry Rock (HDR): heat energy residing in impermeable crystalline rock. Fracturing creates permeability to allow the circulation of water to remove the heat.

Insolation: amount of solar energy reaching a surface per unit of time.

Joule: a standard international unit of energy; 1055 Joules is equal to 1 BTU.

Kilowatt (kW): one thousand Watts; the power requirement of ten 100 W light bulbs.

Kilowatt-hour (kWh): a unit of energy equal to one kW applied for one hour; running a one kW hair dryer for one hour would dissipate one kWh of electrical energy as heat.

Kinetic Energy: energy possessed by virtue of an object's motion.

Megawatt (MW): one million Watts; a modern coal plant will have a capacity of about 1,000 MW.

Megajoule (MJ): One million Joules.

Municipal Solid Waste (MSW): urban refuse collected for landfilling and including paper, organic matter, metals, plastic, etc., but not certain agricultural or industrial wastes.

Ocean Thermal Gradient: differences in the temperature of layers of the ocean potentially useful for running a heat engine.

Passive Systems: systems using the sun's energy without mechanical systems.

Photosynthesis: the biochemical process that utilizes radiant energy from sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water in the presence of chlorophyll.

Photovoltaic Conversion: use of semi-conductors or other devices that convert solar radiation (phototons) directly to electricity.

Quad (Q): unit of energy equivalent to 1015 BTU. One quad is enough to serve all annual energy needs for about 3,000,000 people. Many medium-sized states like Colorado and Arizona consume a total of one quad of energy per pear, which is roughly 1/10th the annual energy consumption in Texas.

Salinity Gradient: a change in salinity between bodies of water or layers within a body of water.

Solar Ponds: ponds of stratified water that collect and retain heat.

Tidal Range: the vertical distance between the high and low tide.

Watt (W): a standard unit of power defined as one Joule of energy transferred or dissipated in one second.

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