A Brief History Of Solar Energy

 History of Solar

From ancient Greek homes built to face the warm winter sun to advanced
thin-film photovoltaics, which generate electricity from the sun,
humans have used the sun’s rays to meet their energy needs. This makes
sense, given that the sun showers the earth every hour with enough
energy to meet world demand for a year. And the best part: this energy
is pollution-free, inexhaustible and accessible to many.


A Brief History of Solar Energy

Ancient Greeks and Romans saw great benefit in what we now refer to as
passive solar design—the use of architecture to make use of the sun’s
capacity to light and heat indoor spaces. The Greek philosopher
Socrates wrote, “In houses that look toward the south, the sun
penetrates the portico in winter.” Romans advanced the art by covering
south facing building openings with glass or mica to hold in the heat
of the winter sun. Through calculated use of the sun’s energy, Greeks
and Romans offset the need to burn wood that was often in short
supply.

Auguste Mouchout, inventor of the first active solar motor, questioned
the widespread belief that the fossil fuels powering the Industrial
Revolution in the 19th century would never run out. “Eventually
industry will no longer find in Europe the resources to satisfy its
prodigious expansion. Coal will undoubtedly be used up. What will
industry do then?” Mouchout asked prophetically.

In 1861, Mouchout developed a steam engine powered entirely by the
sun. But its high costs coupled with the falling price of English coal
doomed his invention to become a footnote in energy history.

Nevertheless, solar energy continued to intrigue and attract European
scientists through the 19th century. Scientists developed large cone-
shaped collectors that could boil ammonia to perform work like
locomotion and refrigeration. France and England briefly hoped that
solar energy could power their growing operations in the sunny
colonies of Africa and East Asia.

In the United States, Swedish-born John Ericsson led efforts to
harness solar power. He designed the “parabolic trough collector,” a
technology which functions more than a hundred years later on the same
basic design. Ericsson is best known for having conceived the USS
Monitor, the armored ship integral to the U.S. Civil War.

Solar power could boast few major gains through the first half of the
20th century, though interest in a solar-powered civilization never
completely disappeared. In fact, Albert Einstein was awarded the 1921
Nobel Prize in physics for his research on the photoelectric effect—a
phenomenon central to the generation of electricity through solar
cells.

Some 50 years prior, William Grylls Adams had discovered that when
light was shined upon selenium, the material shed electrons, thereby
creating electricity.

In 1953, Bell Laboratories (now AT&T labs) scientists Gerald Pearson,
Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller developed the first silicon solar cell
capable of generating a measurable electric current. The New York
Times reported the discovery as “the beginning of a new era, leading
eventually to the realization of harnessing the almost limitless
energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.”

In 1956, solar photovoltaic (PV) cells were far from economically
practical. Electricity from solar cells ran about $300 per watt. (For
comparison, current market rates for a watt of solar PV hover around
$5.) The “Space Race” of the 1950s and 60s gave modest opportunity for
progress in solar, as satellites and crafts used solar paneling for
electricity.

It was not until October 17, 1973 that solar leapt to prominence in
energy research. The Arab Oil Embargo demonstrated the degree to which
the Western economy depended upon a cheap and reliable flow of oil. As
oil prices nearly doubled over night, leaders became desperate to find
a means of reducing this dependence. In addition to increasing
automobile fuel economy standards and diversifying energy sources, the
U.S. government invested heavily in the solar electric cell that Bell
Laboratories had produced with such promise in 1953.

The hope in the 1970s was that through massive investment in subsidies
and research, solar photovoltaic costs could drop precipitously and
eventually become competitive with fossil fuels.

By the 1990s, the reality was that costs of solar energy had dropped
as predicted, but costs of fossil fuels had also dropped—solar was
competing with a falling baseline.

However, huge PV market growth in Japan and Germany from the 1990s to
the present has reenergized the solar industry. In 2002 Japan
installed 25,000 solar rooftops. Such large PV orders are creating
economies of scale, thus steadily lowering costs. The PV market is
currently growing at a blistering 30 percent per year, with the
promise of continually decreasing costs. Meanwhile, solar thermal
water heating is an increasingly cost-effective means of lowering gas
and electricity demand.

As you’ve seen, technologies have changed and improved for decades.
Still, the basics of solar thermal and photovoltaics have remained the
same.

 How PV and solar thermal works
 Solar in the Southeast
Sources:
 www.solarenergy.com/info_history.html
 www.californiasolarcenter.org/history_pv.html
 “Winner, Loser or Innocent Victim?” Discussion Paper 99-28.
Resources  for the Future.
  “OECD Total Gross Oil Imports from OPEC, 1991-2003.” Energy
Information Administration.

http://www.southface.org/solar/solar-roadmap/solar_how-to/history-of-solar.=
htm