Review: Powerful overview
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 10, 2012
There is a lot of information available about solar power. Some of it is highly technical and hard to understand. Some is more political opinion than factual. It can be hard work combing through it to find the facts most useful to the ordinary consumer. A.J. O'Brien has done that work and produced a very readable summary in non-technical terms.While the electricity from the sun is free, the technology to generate electricity from the sun is not. O'Brien provides information about what components a solar system requires, how much it costs to install, and what government programs and other incentives exist to make solar electricity more affordable.I confess that I tend to be skeptical about many books and articles that popularize difficult material, although I have done my own research on solar power and recognize O'Brien's accuracy. The biggest problem with books like this is that so many of them simply ask readers to take the author's authority for granted. O'Brien's book concludes with a resource section, an annotated list of four important web sites, one for breaking news, two from the government, and one that helps find information specific to whatever area an interested person might live in.