The History of Solar Panels
Photovoltaic power was first discovered by a French scientist,
Antoine Becquerel, in 1839. Many scientists that followed
experimented with solar power and tried to build a device that would
capture the sun’s energy and redirect it but they were not able to
find a way to make a working PV cell. The solar cell was first
successfully made by the scientist, Charles Fritts, in 1882. Since
they didn’t have the same types of materials that we have today the
first working solar cell was made of thin sheets of Selenium, a
mineral, that were then coated with gold.
Even though the use of solar panels for generating electricity and
heat seems like a relatively new development it’s actually been
widely used to generate power since the early 1900’s. Photos from
that period show a series of parabola shaped “sun catchers” that
would harness the power of the sun and focus it on water tanks. Once
the water was heated it made steam which was used to power farm
machinery. The solar heated water created enough steam to power 55
horsepower machinery which was cutting edge at the time.
Then, in the middle of the Industrial Revolution, businesses found
that they could use the sun’s energy to heat water which created
steam to power the machines in the factories. At that time solar
energy was considered the wave of the future and a lot of companies
began developing better ways to use the sun’s energy until after WWI
when fossil fuels became more attractive to companies and farm
owners to run their machinery.
The first working silicon solar cell didn’t come along until 1941
when an employee at a Bell laboratory, Russell Ohl, patented his
design for a silicon based PV cell. In 1954, Bell labs mass produced
the first crystal silicon solar cell. The Bell PV cell converted 4%
of the sun’s energy into electricity a rate that was considered the
cutting edge in energy technology.
Scientists continued to reinvent and rework the design of the
original silicon PV cell and were eventually able to produce a solar
cell that was capable of putting out a 20% return electricity rate.
In the 1980’s solar cell technology was being used almost
exclusively for space travel.
The use of solar power in space is a natural given that spacecraft can’t burn
fossil fuels in the vacuum of space and in space the rays of the sun are not
reduced by the Earth’s atmosphere and clouds. In the late 1990’s as awareness
grew in the science community about the effects of global warming and the need
for renewable energy sources scientists continued to refine the silicon PV cell
until by early 2000 they were able to make a solar cell with 24% electricity
return.
In just 7 years scientists were again able to increase the electricity return of
the silicon solar cell using space age materials. By 2007, modern silicon PV
solar cells were operating with a 28% electricity return. As scientists continue
to make better solar cells it will become more common and more cost effective
for homeowners to use solar cells and solar panels to power their homes.