Miramar

Miramar is a place name of Spanish origin. It means "sea-view" or "sea sight" from mira ("watch") and mar ("sea"). It may refer to:

Places

Africa

Asia

Europe

North America

Oceania

South America

San Diego

San Diego /ˌsæn diːˈeɪɡoʊ/ (Spanish for "Saint Didacus") is a major city in California, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean in Southern California, approximately 120 miles (190 km) south of Los Angeles and immediately adjacent to the border with Mexico.

With an estimated population of 1,381,069 as of July 1, 2014, San Diego is the eighth-largest city in the United States and second-largest in California. San Diego is the birthplace of California and is known for its mild year-round climate, natural deep-water harbor, extensive beaches, long association with the U.S. Navy, and recent emergence as a healthcare and biotechnology development center.

Historically home to the Kumeyaay people, San Diego was the first site visited by Europeans on what is now the West Coast of the United States. Upon landing in San Diego Bay in 1542, Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo claimed the entire area for Spain, forming the basis for the settlement of Alta California 200 years later. The Presidio and Mission of San Diego, founded in 1769, formed the first European settlement in what is now California. In 1821, San Diego became part of newly independent Mexico, and in 1850, became part of the United States following the Mexican–American War and the admission of California to the union.

Thermal energy

In thermodynamics, thermal energy refers to the internal energy present in a system by virtue of its temperature. The average translational kinetic energy possessed by free particles in a system of free particles in thermodynamic equilibrium (as measured in the frame of reference of the center of mass of that system) may also be referred to as the thermal energy per particle.

Microscopically, the thermal energy may include both the kinetic energy and potential energy of a system's constituent particles, which may be atoms, molecules, electrons, or particles. It originates from the individually random, or disordered, motion of particles in a large ensemble. In ideal monatomic gases, thermal energy is entirely kinetic energy. In other substances, in cases where some of the thermal energy is stored in atomic vibration or by increased separation of particles having mutual forces of attraction, the thermal energy is equally partitioned between potential energy and kinetic energy. Thermal energy is thus equally partitioned between all available degrees of freedom of the particles. As noted, these degrees of freedom may include pure translational motion in gases, rotational motion, vibrational motion and associated potential energies. In general, due to quantum mechanical reasons, the availability of any such degrees of freedom is a function of the energy in the system, and therefore depends on the temperature (see heat capacity for discussion of this phenomenon).

Thermal energy storage

Thermal energy storage (TES) is achieved with greatly differing technologies that collectively accommodate a wide range of needs. It allows excess thermal energy to be collected for later use, hours, days or many months later, at individual building, multiuser building, district, town or even regional scale depending on the specific technology. As examples: energy demand can be balanced between day time and night time; summer heat from solar collectors can be stored interseasonally for use in winter; and cold obtained from winter air can be provided for summer air conditioning. Storage mediums include: water or ice-slush tanks ranging from small to massive, masses of native earth or bedrock accessed with heat exchangers in clusters of small-diameter boreholes (sometimes quite deep); deep aquifers contained between impermeable strata; shallow, lined pits filled with gravel and water and top-insulated; and eutectic, phase-change materials.

Other sources of thermal energy for storage include heat or cold produced with heat pumps from off-peak, lower cost electric power, a practice called peak shaving; heat from combined heat and power (CHP) power plants; heat produced by renewable electrical energy that exceeds grid demand and waste heat from industrial processes. Heat storage, both seasonal and short term, is considered an important means for cheaply balancing high shares of variable renewable electricity production and integration of electricity and heating sectors in energy systems almost or completely fed by renewable energy.

Energy storage

Energy storage is the capture of energy produced at one time for use at a later time. A device that stores energy is sometimes called an accumulator. Energy comes in multiple forms including radiation, chemical, gravitational potential, electrical potential, electricity, elevated temperature, latent heat and kinetic. Energy storage involves converting energy from forms that are difficult to store to more conveniently or economically storable forms.

Some technologies provide short-term energy storage, while others can endure for much longer.

A wind-up clock stores potential energy (in this case mechanical, in the spring tension), a rechargeable battery stores readily convertible chemical energy to operate a mobile phone, and a hydroelectric dam stores energy in a reservoir as gravitational potential energy. Fossil fuels such as coal and gasoline store ancient energy derived from sunlight by organisms that later died, became buried and over time were then converted into these fuels. Food (which is made by the same process as fossil fuels) is a form of energy stored in chemical form.