Review by James Defenbaugh[edit source]
1. What is the most important strength of this document? The most important strength of this document is the thoroughness of the energy required to produce PV chips.
2. What is the most important aspect to change?
3. How could the navigation of the document be improved? Retitle the “Comparison to Other Energy Sources” maybe tell what you are comparing in the header and retitle “Production” to something like greenhouse gases from production: Retitle “Energy and Material Usage” include greenhouse emissions in there somewhere:
4. Do you have suggestions for improving the headings used in the document? I would like to see the headings be a little more consistent when it comes to formatting. I don’t know why they are different.
5. Are there any topic sentences that should be improved? The topic sentences for “Energy Use in Production and Installation”, “Energy Payback”, is not really a topic sentence.
6. Do all figures have captions, figure numbers and are they referred to in the text? All figures have captions but not all of the figures are numbered or numbered correctly. Also not all the figures are referred to in the text.
7. Is there at least one reference per author? Are the references cited properly and do they use the format described here? https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Footnotes There are more than one reference per author. The references appear to be cited properly, but they do not use the format described by appropedia.
8. Are tables included as text whenever possible? (Appropedia can search text in tables – so Lonny prefers tables to be text rather than images). This page contains information on how to make tables https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Table_examples There is one table and it appears to be an image.
9. Should the document be shortened or lengthened? If so, what suggestions do you have. The length of the document seems reasonable.
10. Any other questions or comments for the authors?
Review by Jeff Evans[edit source]
| CHECK LIST | RESPONSE TO INCLUDE ON APPROPEDIA |
| 1. What is the most important strength of this document? | Emissions and efficiency comparison to other energy generation methods. |
| 2. What is the most important aspect to change? | Some of your carbon dioxide production percentages refer to the particular process and some refer to the LCA as a whole for example your production percentages add to 100 % for production but give no reference to the percentage of the life cycle while the transportation is per life cycle. |
| 3. How could the navigation of the document be improved? | Navigation is good you might add a sentence in each section introduction stating what subsections will be found for each section. |
| 4. Do you have suggestions for improving the headings used in the document? | Just make sure they are consistent one state lifecycle of energy then the next one is lifecycle of carbon dioxide for Photovoltaics. |
| 5. Are there any topic sentences that should be improved? | See above just add a sentence giving section outlines. |
| 6. Do all figures have captions, figure numbers and are they referred to in the text? | No some of the Figures are missing numbers. |
| 7. Is there at least one reference per author? Are the references cited properly and do they use the format described here? https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Footnotes | The last reference could have link even if it is just a journal source just to be consistant. |
| 8. Are tables included as text whenever possible? (Appropedia can search text in tables – so Lonny prefers tables to be text rather than images). This page contains information on how to make tables https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Table_examples | One is a figure of a table however it looks to be a fairly extensive table. Suggestion: copy individual columns into Microsoft onenote and use the convert picture to text command then copy the column to excel should be able to create the actual table quickly. |
| 9. Should the document be shortened or lengthened? If so, what suggestions do you have. | When more research is available on waste and recycling then it could be extended for now its good. |
Review by Lisa Hockaday[edit source]
| CHECK LIST | RESPONSE TO INCLUDE ON APPROPEDIA |
| 1. What is the most important strength of this document? | I liked the section on energy payback. You guys did a good job illustrating the important point that payback occurs before the lifetime of the panels. |
| 2. What is the most important aspect to change? | I would do some proof reading of the text. I found errors like this: “installation and transportation of the final produce.” Where “produce” should have been “product.” (This was in the Energy Use in Production and Installation section.) |
| 3. How could the navigation of the document be improved? | I can’t think of how improvement could occur for this part. I had no trouble finding my way around the page. Some reorganization could occur, like with the sections for manufacturing (mentioned in #9). |
| 4. Do you have suggestions for improving the headings used in the document? | Main headings (the ones that have the dividing lines between the sections) should be in bold. Right now, the subsections underneath them are competing for much of the reader’s attention – my eye got drawn in by the bold letters first even though they were smaller.
Some of the subheadings are different font sizes. Make sure that this is what you intended to do. |
| 5. Are there any topic sentences that should be improved? | I think that the following sentence should be the topic sentence in the Energy Use in Production and Installation section: “Manufacturing photovoltaics is overwhelmingly the most energy intensive step of installed PV modules.” |
| 6. Do all figures have captions, figure numbers and are they referred to in the text? | The introductory photo of panels has a caption but no reference in the text, but it is obvious that this is just a picture to give the reader and idea of what this type of panel looks like, so I don’t think it needs to be referred to in the text.
Figure 1 has a caption and a reference in the text, but “figure” should be capitalized in the text. Figure 2 has both caption and text reference. The bar graph, which is the figure just after Figure 2, has a caption, but does not have a figure number. The text does refer to it, but it would be easier to make the reference if the figure was numbered. The flow chart, which is labeled as Figure 2, should be labeled Figure 3 and be referenced in the text. |
| 7. Is there at least one reference per author? Are the references cited properly and do they use the format described here? https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Footnotes | One thing to improve is to make all of the references hyperlinked so that they just show up at the bottom. As a reader of material on the web, I didn’t expect to see in-text citations like we do with what we write for school. On the web, it just makes it appear cluttered. |
| 8. Are tables included as text whenever possible? (Appropedia can search text in tables – so Lonny prefers tables to be text rather than images). This page contains information on how to make tables https://www.appropedia.org/Help:Table_examples | There is a table for energy payback times included on the page, but it is not included as text. It could potentially be quite laborious to transfer it all into text as it is a large table with statistics for different countries and cities on solar power. In this case, I think it would not be all that beneficial to transfer it into text form. |
| 9. Should the document be shortened or lengthened? If so, what suggestions do you have. | I think that the length is appropriate, but you could elaborate on the manufacture of the panels. For instance, in the Energy and Materials Usage section, you talk about the carbon emissions being generated during the lifecycle of the PV panel by the transportation and installation, but are there any generated during the manufacturing process too? Perhaps this small “Production” section could be merged with the text earlier that talks about manufacturing. |
| 10. Any other questions or comments for the authors? | In the Brief History of Solar Power, you mention that the pn-junction was accidentally developed. I wanted to hear more about that – the idea that this was not deliberate was intriguing to me.
Change “overtime” to “over time”. This occurs in the first sentence in the Lifecycle of Energy section. In the Lifecycle of Energy section, you talk about the section looking into the energy side of the lifecycle analysis, without mentioning what the other side is. Perhaps you should first tell the reader that there are two sides of the story (is the other one the carbon analysis?), then it would make more logical sense to focus on the energy side. |