Solar Sacrifice: How an Arizona Church Lost Money by Going Solar—and Solutions for When Energy Incentives Fail to Serve the Needs of Nonprofits

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Krantz
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Religious Institutions ◽  
Solar Photovoltaic ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Photovoltaic Panels ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Oral History Interviews

By policy design, consumers are supposed to save money when they invest in solar energy. This paper presents a case study of what happens when a church goes solar and the finances go wrong. Following the installation of solar-photovoltaic panels, the Arizona church—in the Valley of the Sun, among the sunniest places in the country—decreased its energy consumption, but its electric bills went up. Through oral-history interviews of key stakeholders, the author investigates what happened, and what could be done to prevent other religious institutions and nonprofits from experiencing the church’s fate.

scholarly journals From the ghetto to the Gulag, from the ghetto to Israel: Soviet collaboration trials against the Shargorod ghetto’s Jewish Council

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Schneider
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Occupied Territories ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Mitigating Circumstances

Beginning in 1944, Soviet authorities arrested former Jewish Council members of different ghettos and put them on trial for collaboration with the Axis powers. This case study examines the 1944 trials of Meir Teich and Isaak Sherf, two leading figures of the Shargorod ghetto’s Jewish administration. Drawing on trial documents, oral history interviews and memoirs, this article focuses on two aspects: how Soviet courts selectively accepted support for the partisans as mitigating circumstances, and how survivor networks among the witnesses influenced the trials. These aspects are discussed in the context of the (re-)Sovietization of formerly occupied territories, in this case Transnistria, the Romanian occupation zone.

scholarly journals Researching around our subjects

2021 ◽  
pp. 166-188
Author(s):  
Frances C. Galt
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Television History ◽  
Archival Material ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
Concentric Circles ◽  
Women's Film ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Union Activism

This article explores the opportunities and obstacles of researching women’s trade union activism in the British film and television industries between 1933 and 2017. The surviving material on women’s union participation is incomplete and fragmented, and so my research has combined an examination of archival material—the union’s journal and the meeting minutes, correspondence and ephemera of three iterations of its equality committee—with new and existing oral history interviews. Sherry J. Katz has termed this methodological approach “researching around our subjects”, which involves “working outward in concentric circles of related sources” to reconstruct women’s experiences (90). While “researching around my subjects” was a challenging and time-consuming process, it was also a rewarding one, producing important insights into union activism as it relates to gender and breaking new ground in both women’s labour and women’s film and television history. This article concludes with a case study on the appointment of Sarah Benton as researcher for the ACTT’s Patterns report in 1973, revealing the benefits of this methodological approach in reconstructing events which have been effectively erased from the official record.

scholarly journals Solar.q_1: A new solar-tracking mechanism based on four-bar linkages

2016 ◽  
Vol 231 (15) ◽  
pp. 2855-2867 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Quaglia ◽  
Simone Luca Maurino
Keyword(s):  
Energy Consumption ◽  
Design Process ◽  
Control Strategy ◽  
Parallel Mechanism ◽  
Polar Axis ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Kinematic Structure ◽  
Photovoltaic Panels ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Solar Tracking

This paper describes the early stages of the design process of a 2-DOF parallel mechanism, based on the use of four-bar linkages and intended to move photovoltaic panels in order to perform sun tracking. Primary importance is given to the search for a way to compensate sun–earth’s relative motions with two decoupled rotations of the panel. This leads to devise a kinematic structure characterized by a particular arrangement of the revolute axes. At the same time, the structure itself is designed in order to be slender. Subsequently, the fact that during a day the earth’s revolution around the sun has negligible effects on the apparent trajectory of the sun, if compared to the rotation around the polar axis, leads to choose a control strategy which, also thanks to the said arrangement of axes, employs only 1-DOF for most of the daytime. The tracker which employs this strategy has, theoretically, an energy consumption similar to that of 1-DOF solar trackers but a precision similar to that of 2-DOF ones.

scholarly journals Effect of Dust and High Temperature on Photovoltaics Performance in the New Capital Area

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 360-370
Author(s):  
Engy Elshazly ◽  
Ahmed Α. Abd El-Rehim ◽  
Amr Abdel Kader ◽  
Iman El-Mahallawi
Keyword(s):  
High Temperature ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Environmental Parameters ◽  
Electrical Performance ◽  
Solar Photovoltaic ◽  
Solar Panels ◽  
Photovoltaic Panels ◽  
Cost Of Energy ◽  
Dust Accumulation

The trend for integrating solar Photovoltaic Panels as an alternative renewable and sustainable energy source is growing in Egypt, North Africa and the Middle East. However, these efforts are not widely accepted by the society due to their lower efficiencies. The efficiency of the photovoltaic panels is affected by many environmental parameters, which have a negative impact on system efficiency and cost of energy, dust and increased panel temperatures being the most serious. This work presents the results of a case study conducted at The British University in Egypt at El-Sherouk city to study the effect of different parameters such as dust accumulation, water cooling and coating on their performance of both mono- and poly-crystalline panels at El-Sherouk City. The effects of high temperature and dust accumulation on different solar panels placed in natural outdoor conditions at El-Sherouk City were studied and the electrical performance of dusted, cleaned, and cooled PV panels is presented. The variation in the efficiency of mono-crystalline panels installed at different tilt angles, resulting from the accumulation of dust on their surface, was also studied. The results showed that the accumulation of dust on the surface of different types of solar panels can reduce the efficiency by 30%. While the high temperature can reduce the efficiency by up to 10 %. The results showed that the power reduction percentage was 17%, 20%, 25%, 27% and 30% for tilt angles 60°,45°,30°,15° and 0°; respectively. Tilt angles 15° and 30° showed to be optimal for the installation of the PV solar system, as they resulted the highest amount of output power

scholarly journals Talking About Pen Sao in the 1950s-60s: An Exploration Through Discussion on A History of Design and Manners

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Juthamas Tangsantikul
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Thai Women ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Design ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Oral History Interviews

This paper presents a case study on the role objects played in the construction of Thai women as social subjects in the period of American Era and Development. Based on the analysis of popular Thai etiquette manual Kritsana son nong: Naenam marayat thi ngam haeng araya samai, I conducted oral history interviews with women growing up in the period. The conversation brought to light the term pen sao and illustrated that while certain objects and practices were portrayed generally as signs of modernity and civilisation, they could also be perceived as suspicious when being viewed as signs of gender differences.

Colour and light: Colour theory and mechanization in Sunday in the Park with George’s Chromolume

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Rubel
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Science And Technology ◽  
Production Decisions ◽  
Stephen Sondheim ◽  
Theatrical Design ◽  
Colour Theory ◽  
Oral History Interviews

This article explores how Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George conveys Seurat’s scientific influences, how the show’s Chromolume engages with Seurat and his modernist legacy, and how the 1984 and 2017 Chromolume designs reflect Seurat’s work and legacy. Using original oral history interviews, this article compares the 1984 and 2017 Broadway Chromolume designs to explore how production decisions inform the show’s engagement with pointillism, Seurat and colour theory. By analysing Sunday, this article sets out to provide a case study highlighting how science and technology inform and influence the book, music and theatrical design of a major American musical.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Robert Garner ◽  
Yewande Okuleye
Keyword(s):  
Oral History ◽  
Group Dynamics ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
Oral History Interviews ◽  
Oxford Group

The introduction sets the scene for the book by sketching out the theoretical framework to be used to analyze the Oxford Group. The study of the Oxford Group serves as a case study of creative endeavor. How do we explain the emergence of important work and the development of new ideas, and how important is the creative community within which these ideas emerge? Explaining the theory building that accompanied the ethnographic research, centering on a set of oral history interviews with the participants, is important not only as a way of making sense of the Oxford Group but also as a device to facilitate dialogue across fields and methods by providing a trans-situational language. The theoretical framework derives both from ethnographic observation—and in that sense is engaged with grounded theory—and from the extension and refinement of preexisting theoretical formulations. This includes an engagement with the literature on group dynamics, including most notably collaborative circles as well as social network theory and psychogeography.

Design and Analysis of an Urban Building Integrated PV System

Solar Energy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shveta Kantamsetti ◽  
Mary Raskauskas ◽  
Vanessa Torres ◽  
Pritpal Singh
Keyword(s):  
Urban Development ◽  
Urban Environment ◽  
Physical Model ◽  
Material Properties ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Pv System ◽  
Photovoltaic Panels ◽  
Building Geometry ◽  
Center City

The objective of the present project is to estimate the power generated from solar energy absorbed by photovoltaic panels mounted on the fac¸ade of a building in an urban environment, taking into account shading and reflection from neighboring buildings. A simple prototype of an urban development has been designed and modeled in AutoCAD, with the help of AccuRender. This paper includes the simulation of the model, taking into consideration the building geometry, orientation with respect to the sun, material properties of the surrounding buildings, and ground reflections. Also included is a discussion about a scaled physical model that is being used to validate the computer modeling, followed by a case study on the installation of a BIPV system on Ten Penn Center in Center City, Philadelphia.

Case Study: What is it That University-Based Oral History Can Do? The Berkeley Experience

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cándida Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Oral History ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Oral History Interviews

University-based oral history needs to undergo a transformation. The process of going out and interviewing people for first-hand knowledge of historical events is as old as the historical discipline itself. This article focuses on a case study on what university-based oral history can do when it comes to the study of oral history. Interviews continued to be one of the most important tools for historians studying recent topics, but oral history as practiced today had its beginnings in the early nineteenth century when researchers began compiling and preserving stenographic records of the interviews they carried out. Modern oral history has centered on making the words of the historical informants accessible, so that narrators can continue to speak of their experiences to subsequent generations. Oral sources have been an important part of scholarly life for the past two centuries because they have made visible forms of collective life that are difficult to document in other ways.

scholarly journals There and Back Again: The Making of Uganda’s Mobile Money Tax

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne Lees ◽  
Doris Akol
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Policy Design ◽  
Low Income Countries ◽  
Mobile Money ◽  
Key Stakeholders ◽  
Policy Adjustment

This paper evaluates the appropriateness of the tax policymaking process that led to the introduction, and the later adaptation, of a tax on mobile money transactions in Uganda in 2018. We examine the unusual source of the proposal, how this particular tax diverged from the usual tax policymaking process, and whether certain key stakeholders were excluded. We argue that weaknesses in the tax policymaking process undermined the quality of policy design, and resulted in a period of costly, and avoidable, policy adjustment. This case study is relevant for Uganda as well as for other low-income countries which could be exposed to similar challenges in designing effective taxes for the mobile money industry.

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