For the last few years, it has been a privilege and honor for me to know Dr. Peter Gevorkian, an eminent scientist, a research engineer of high caliber, a prominent author, and an educator actively engaged over the three last decades in the sunrise field of renewable energy and solar PV systems.

This book is the culmination of his vast experience as a research scholar and a practicing engineer of international repute, which has been well demonstrated in the six textbooks authored by him over the last decade. But this magnum opus is a watershed in his extensive and everlasting contributions to explaining the significance of this complex discipline. This work further consolidates all the important concepts of his subject under one cover and brings to the public domain many critical issues that until now have not been easily available to the general public.

The book demonstrates his mastery of this multidisciplinary subject. It covers almost all critical aspects and will prove extremely helpful to any practicing engineer, whether involved in design, engineering, research, project management, operation, maintenance, diagnostics, and so on, as well as those involved in the commercial and economic considerations of setting up solar farms.

Apart from being a visionary and a great engineer, Dr. Gevorkian is a linguist, a poet, and a versatile painter, but above all he is a philosopher with deep knowledge of both western and eastern philosophies, which enables him to look at any topic in a most unbiased way and to examine a multiplicity of viewpoints with their relative merits and demerits. He has utilized these resources in a most effective way to make this book a magnum opus of solar PV systems.

The future of solar PV installations is very bright on a worldwide basis, which will be a boon to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This book will enable all practicing engineers in the field to understand how we should look at such systems in totality. The numerous benefits that will flow from following the very clear and well-presented explanations of diverse areas in this complex discipline will also greatly improve the overall economics of solar systems, ensuring uninterrupted power generation with a minimum of downtime, which has been a common problem and has bedeviled a large number of solar farms designed and installed earlier.