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Renewable energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the world. The continuing
development of renewable energy technologies over the past few decades has led to
significant improvements in conversion efficiencies and decreases in equipment costs.
As the development of renewable energy increases across the world, experience with these
technologies will likely lead to further improvement and innovation.
A wide variety of technologies provide energy from the different renewable resources.
Resources such as biomass, wind, solar, hydro, and geothermal each have unique
technologies which convert the energy of the resource in to a usable form. Many of these
resources have several associated energy conversion technologies – biomass, for
example, has a number of conversion processes to accommodate the great variety of the
resource. Conversely, wind power utilizes the same general conversion principle for any
wind resource.
The following are renewable energy technologies currently developed for commercial
power generation:
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