Part I
A Biography of Terrestrial Photovoltaics
âThe silicon solar cell may mark the beginning of a new era leading eventually to the realization of one of the mankind's most cherished dreams â the harnessing of almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of the civilization.â
New York Times, 1954 [2]
Solar power has now become an indispensable part of the global energy mix, so it is easy to forget that less than a generation ago it was dismissed as an expensive, unreliable irrelevance.
By the last quarter of the twentieth century, the world had exploited apparently inexhaustible and cheap deposits of fossil fuels for more than 200 years, and saw no need for âalternativeâ sources of energy.
It was a crisis to this oil-dependent world that opens the story of terrestrial solar energy, told in this Part I. It is followed in Part II by fuller descriptions of the pioneering people, events, and organizations, which created this new energy sector. Finally, Part III gives a comprehensive reference section of sources and resources.
1
Origins of Terrestrial Solar Power
âWhere shall I begin, please your Majesty?â he asked.
âBegin at the beginning,â the King said, very gravely, âand go on till you come to the end: then stop.â
Lewis Carroll [3]
If we were to begin at the beginning of the story of solar energy, we would go all the way back to the formation of the sun and the earth. Virtually all the energy we use comes straight from the sun; only atomic and geothermal energy use a resource that is not directly solar in origin. Sunshine fueled the growth of the organisms that gave rise to the earth's coal, oil, and gas deposits. Today it grows the trees and crops for our biomass and biogas production. It is the source of the rain for our hydropower and wind for the turbines.
But let's not begin this story in prehistory.
If we were to begin with when solar energy was first used to produce electricity, we would go back before Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize in 1921, which many will be surprised to hear was for his work on photoelectricity [4], not quantum theory. We would need to look at the previous century's achievements of the Becquerel family in discovering the phenomenon of deriving an electric charge from sunlight â the photovoltaic effect [5]. We'd look at the work of Bell Laboratories and others in the mid-twentieth century on early solar cells, and the first applications of photovoltaic (PV) devices in space in 1958. But I intend to cover the birth of photovoltaics only fleetingly.
Instead, this story begins with the âfirst oil crisisâ of 1973â1974. That one event, more than any other, heightened mankind's awareness that the energy sources it so desperately depended on were neither ubiquitous nor infinite. This led to dramatically increased interest in what at the time was called âalternative energy.â It also led to the formation of the International Energy Agency in 1974. Furthermore, the sudden increase in the oil price brought about by the crisis started a progressive change in attitude about the value of energy, and made hitherto costly looking alternatives more attractive.
This congruence of factors led to what I consider to be the start of the terrestrial photovoltaics industry. This is when Joseph Lindmayer, Peter Varadi, Bill Yerkes, and Ishaq Shahryar left the US space solar industry to establish independent PV companies; and Elliot Berman persuaded Exxon to back his solar enterprise. It is when electronics and energy companies in Europe and Japan shifted photovoltaics out of their research laboratories and into business units. And it is when marketing of solar systems for use on earth really began, although there had been isolated earlier applications.
Having decided where to begin, the next decision is where to end. The end of a millennium is a notable juncture in any case, and 1999 was the year when cumulative solar photovoltaic capacity reached its first gigawatt (1 billion watts) [6]. It also proved to be a turning point for renewable energy. It was just into the new millennium when national feed-in tariffs were first introduced for solar power; and they, more than any other mechanism, created the climate for explosive growth in renewables generally and solar power in particular.
This book therefore focuses on terrestrial photovoltaics between 1973 and 1999. For convenience, I refer to this period as simply our time frame, the early PV era, or the first solar generation.
1.1 OPEC Oil Crisis
The first oil crisis was sparked in October 1973 when some members of OPEC proclaimed an oil embargo in response to American supply of arms to Israel in the Yom Kippur War. At the time petroleum consumption by industrialized countries was rising rapidly and the price of oil was about $3 per barrel.
The Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) comprised the Arab members of OPEC including Syria and Egypt, who had started the war. The embargo covered shipments not only to the United States but also to Canada, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom.
The resulting strain on international relations led to intensive diplomacy headed by the Nixon administration's Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. The prospect of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria eventually led to the embargo being lifted in March 1974, by which time the global oil price had risen fourfold to almost $12.
OPEC members, led by Saudi Arabia's Sheikh Yamani, recognized the leverage they could exert and agreed to use the world price-setting mechanism for oil to increase their income. The continuing relatively high price of oil, and a keener appreciation of the concept of energy security, led industrialized nations to consider other energy options more actively.
1.2 Energy Security
Before this oil shock, the supply of fossil fuel was assumed to be virtually infinite. It was OPEC's constraint on supply that, albeit artificial, sowed the seeds for a more realistic view.
Although the expression âpeak oilâ wasn't coined until later, some analysts now started to consider the lifetime of available fossil fuel deposits and the dynamics between rates of discovery, exploitation, and consumption. Shell's M. King Hubbert had first postulated his peak theory in 1956 [7] and projected in 1974 that US oil consumption could by 1995 exceed the pace of new discovery [8]. The name Peak Oil was given to this phenomenon [9] in 2002 and this concept is now widely accepted, although the precise dates remain a topic for debate.
The concept of âenergy securityâ has subsequently been broadened to take into account other factors such as the political stability of the regions where energy is produced, and risks associated with transporting it to the point consumption. Other threats such as terrorism also need to be weighed in the balance.
The second oil crisis provided further impetus to the growth of renewable energy. This started in 1979 when oil production in Iran declined after the revolution there, and it was exacerbated the following year by the outbreak of the IranâIraq war, which almost stopped production in Iran and severely curtailed Iraq's output.
So energy security, in the form of the availabil...
