Modern renewable energy technology, as a means of generating electricity, began 170 years ago.

The History of Solar-Electric Technology The phenomenon of the “photoelectric effect”, the ability to produce electricity directly from sunlight, was discovered in 1839 by a nineteen-year-old French experimental physicist, Edmund Becquerel. In the years that followed numerous others made observations and discoveries that contributed to our understanding of the photoelectric effect. In 1873, Willoughby Smith discovered that the electrical resistance of the element Selenium varied dramatically with the amount of light falling on it. In 1876, William Grylls Adams, working with his student, Richard Evans Day, observed the photoelectric effect in Selenium, the first time ever in a solid material. In 1884, in Livingston, Columbia County, NY, inventor Charles Fritts created the world's first solar-electric module -- Selenium coated with an extremely thin layer of gold -- which converted less than one percent of sunlight to electricity.

In 1905, Albert Einstein submitted a paper to a leading German physics journal offering a new understanding of the nature of light. He argued that light, in addition to acting like waves, also consisted of tiny, discrete, independent particles of energy, or “light quanta” as he called them, that carried a "quantum" or fixed amount of energy. While Einstein's light quantum hypothesis was a major breakthrough in scientific thought because it further explained the nature of light, it was also remarkable in that it simultaneously explained the previously inexplicable photoelectric effect: Electrons were ejected from a metal when irradiated by light because they absorbed the light's entire quantum of energy on impact. In the years that followed, Einstein showed that the energy of each light quanta was proportional to the frequency of the light and that the total energy in a beam of light was equal to the sum of the individual energies of the discrete light quanta. Today, we call these light quanta "photons." In 1921, Einstein received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his theories explaining the photoelectric effect.

It wasn’t until the 1950’s, however, that useful photoelectric technology actually began to develop. In 1953, Paul Rappaport, J.J. Loferski and D. A. Jenny at RCA Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey, began reporting on the “photovoltaic effect”, as it was then being called. About the same time, at AT&T’s Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, researchers Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller, and Gerald Pearson, while experimenting with semiconductors, observed that they were sensitive to light and could produce usable electric current. They eventually discovered a way to introduce impurities into Silicon that transformed it from a poor conductor of electricity to a superior one. In the process, they inadvertently made the first material that could directly convert enough sunlight into electricity to run electrical devices and Silicon replaced Selenium as the material of choice for making photovoltaic, or “PV” cells, as they came to be called.

Through the 1950s and into the 1960s, photovoltaic technology was too expensive for widespread use, but while efforts to commercialize the silicon solar cell did not fare well, the technology turned out to be well suited for use on satellites where refueling was prohibitively expensive and the cost of solar was small relative to the cost of lifting a satellite into orbit. You might even say that certain circumstances of the space race of the late 1950's actually saved photovoltaic technology. When the U.S. Navy was given the task of launching the United States' first satellite, it rejected solar cells as an untried technology and decided instead to use chemical batteries as the source of power for the Vanguard satellite. A German born and educated gentleman by the name of Dr. Hans K. Ziegler, who at the time was probably the world's foremost expert in satellite instrumentation and who in 1959 later became the Chief Scientist of the US Army Signal Corps' Laboratories at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, strongly disagreed with the Navy. He argued that conventional batteries would run out of power in a matter of days silencing millions of dollars worth of electronic equipment. In contrast, solar cells, he said, could power a satellite for years. Through an unrelenting crusade he finally succeeded in getting the Navy to change its mind. The Navy compromised and agreed to put a dual power system of chemical batteries and silicon solar cells on the Vanguard. As Dr. Ziegler predicted the batteries failed after about a week but the silicon solar cells kept the Vanguard communicating with Earth for years.

Through the 1970s and 1980s, the price of photovoltaic technology gradually declined and solar energy became increasingly used in remote areas where refueling a generator, recharging a battery, or running a connection to the utility grid was prohibitively expensive. These solar applications included marine buoys, navigation warning lights and horns on off-shore oil and gas rigs, the lights on lighthouses, warning lights at a railroad crossings, remote microwave repeater stations, emergency telephones and signs along highways, and remote cabins.

Since the early 1990’s we have witnessed explosive growth in utility grid connected, or “grid-tied” solar applications. In these applications solar produces some or all of the electricity used by a home or business while the home or business remains connected to the utility grid. Typically, a grid-tied solar system produces more electricity than is needed for consumption during the day and simultaneously sends any excess electricity back to the utility company through the electrical grid. Then, during the night when there is no sun, the stored electricity is drawn back through the grid and consumed in the home or business. It is commonly expected that in a few years this type of grid-tied solar system will dwarf all other uses of photovoltaic technology.

The Global Energy Crisis With the coming of the industrial revolution about 150 years ago, man began using the natural resources of the Earth, such as coal, oil and natural gas, to generate electricity. Over the years our reliance on these natural resources has increased dramatically to the point where our continued economic development and rapidly changing way of life are now dependent on them. In developed parts of the world, people usually obtain most of their electricity through a grid network powered by large, sophisticated hydroelectric power plants or natural gas turbine generators, and the utility companies which operate these generators provide them with "on demand" service. Without really thinking about it we simply flip a switch and the lights turn on.

In the 21st century, however, numerous new challenges will dramatically affect our sources of energy, our economic growth and our environment, not only in the United States but throughout the world. Global economic and population growth, technological advances, greater demand for quality reliable power, environmental sensitivities and global warming, and the alarming rise in the prices of oil and natural gas, are all driving us to improve our systems for generating and delivering electrical energy.

Since the price of oil first surged in 1974 we have come to realize that there is a global energy supply crisis. In recent years we have seen crude oil prices soar to record highs of over $146 per barrel. With large, densely populated countries feverishly fueling economic development, the bidding war for oil and for foreign oil companies has just begun, and the leaders of energy companies are finally acknowledging that the problem of world oil and natural gas supplies meeting world demand shows no signs of abating. The days of cheap oil and natural gas are apparently gone forever and we will no longer be able to depend on the Earth's fossil fuel resources to meet our needs indefinitely. We absolutely must find alternative forms of energy to support and protect our modern way of life.

For those of us who live in the United States what is most alarming is the fact that the United States remains reliant on imported fossil fuels while supplies are rapidly diminishing and prices are skyrocketing. According to Congress' Office of Technology Assessment, at present consumption rates the world's known oil reserves will be exhausted in 25 years. If that estimate is correct, we will have no more oil in the year 2037, which will relegate oil, as an energy source, to a mere blip of 175 years in the five-billion-year history of the earth. In addition, between now and then, as the more readily accessible sources of oil dwindle and are tapped out, the cost of oil extraction will only go up.

The global energy crisis is causing especially great economic pain for those who live in the less developed parts of the world, and who, by and large, rely on imported oil to meet their electrical energy needs. Typically, they have little power line infrastructure and use diesel generators as their principal means of generating electricity. They often do not realize that renewable energy is available to them as an alternative, and if they do, their economic limitations do not allow them to consider it.

The Solution: Renewable Energy Technology At SunQuest Technology we believe that the solution to the global energy crisis can be found in renewable energy. We believe that photovoltaic technology in particular, which began to develop more than 170 years ago with Edmund Becquerel’s discovery of the photoelectric effect, has finally come of age (from a historical perspective “just in the nick of time”) and emerged as a commercially viable solution to the global energy crisis.

Interest around the world in renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind and hydrogen fuel cells, continues to grow rapidly, but for the near future, renewable energy technologies will continue to supply only a small fraction of the world's electricity. This small fraction is nonetheless significant. While the cost of generating electricity from fossil-fuel sources continues to go up, the cost of producing electricity from renewable sources will continue to go down, and for years to come renewable energy will be an increasingly important element of every nation's energy plan.

Among the various renewable energy technology options, photovoltaic technology will be particularly significant because it produces electricity without using moving parts, consuming fuel, or creating pollution. Solar electric power is already well suited for the energy portfolios of developing nations and more advanced nations will increasingly rely on it because it improves reliability, reduces distribution and transmission costs, and lowers peak-power price levels.

Renewable energy is clean, sustainable, preserves the environment, offers greater energy independence, improves energy security and supports economic growth. Moreover, because sunlight is widely available, solar-electric power is less vulnerable to international energy politics and volatile fossil fuel markets. Finally, while transmission line capacity and local emission controls are becoming more limited in many regions of the world, including the United States, solar-electric power can be generated at the point of use/consumption (i.e., no transmission lines are required) without environmental impact.

The Future of Renewable Energy As the world demand for energy continues to grow, the skyrocketing prices of our dwindling supplies of oil and natural gas will force the world to generate more and more of its electricity from renewable sources. The evolution to renewable sources for generating electricity will also help to reduce the pollution in our skies and put a lid on global warming.

Today, the world's installed PV capacity is concentrated in a relatively small number of countries. At the end of 2003, Japan, Germany and the United States, the countries with the three largest economies, accounted for over 85% of the total installed PV capacity in the world. In 2004, they accounted for 78% of all new PV modules installed. These countries are also home to the largest PV manufacturers and have the largest government programs to support and subsidize the PV industry.

Germany and Japan consume more than 40% and 30% of the world’s supply of solar panels respectively, while the United States is a distant third at about 11%. The disparity is even more striking when you consider the relative size of the economies of these countries. The United States economy, as measured in terms of Gross National Product, is nearly equal in size to the next five largest economies in the world put together.

This trend is not likely to change in the near future as the availability of economic resources will continue to dictate a nation's ability to obtain renewable energy technology. However, in the longer term this may not be the case. While the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that 3000 GW of new capacity will be required globally by 2020, valued at around $3 trillion, and that the fastest-growing sources of energy will be renewable energy, much of this new renewable energy capacity will be installed in developing nations where its cost is already competitive.

Developing nations have realized that substantial economic returns are possible if they can capitalize on renewable energy. Countries like China, Korea and India have accelerated their efforts to secure dominant technologies and global market share.