A–Z
Energy glossary
Short, plain-English definitions of the terms you meet in energy news and bills.
A
- Albedo
- The share of incoming sunlight that a surface reflects, on a scale from 0 (absorbs everything) to 1 (reflects everything).
C
- Capacity factor
- How much electricity a power plant actually produced over a period, as a share of what it would have produced running flat out the whole time.
S
- Small modular reactor (SMR)
- A nuclear fission reactor designed to be built mostly in a factory as standard modules, with an output of up to about 300 MW of electricity per unit.