History Of Solar Panels Wikipedia

History one of the first applications of concentrated solar was the 6 horsepower 4 5 kw solar powered motor made by h e.

History of solar panels wikipedia.

The oldest uses of solar energy is for heating cooking and drying. Solar energy is the transformation of heat the energy that comes from the sun. It has been used for thousands of years in many different ways by people all over the world. The simplest solar cooker is the box cooker first built by horace de saussure in 1767.

He patented his design in 1941. It all began with edmond becquerel a young physicist working in france who in 1839 observed and discovered the photovoltaic effect a process that produces a voltage or electric current when. A basic box cooker consists of an insulated container with a transparent lid. As the majority of the energy is in the direct beam maximizing collection requires the sun to be visible to the panels for as long as.

From wikipedia the free encyclopedia in the 19th century it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current the photoelectric effect. Willoughby smithfirst described the effect of light on selenium during the passage of an electric current in a 20 february 1873 issue of nature. In 1939 russell ohl created the solar cell design that is used in many modern solar panels. The photovoltaic effectwas experimentally demonstrated first by french physicist edmond becquerel.

Sunlight has two components the direct beam that carries about 90 of the solar energy and the diffuse sunlight that carries the remainder the diffuse portion is the blue sky on a clear day and is a larger proportion of the total on cloudy days. Nowadays producing electricity from the sun s light is cheaper. In 1839 at age 19 he built the world s first photovoltaic cell in his father s laboratory. In 1957 mohamed m.

Willsie and john boyle in 1904. It can be used effectively with partially overcast skies and will typically reach temperatures of 90 150 c 194 302 f. Atalla developed the process of silicon surface passivation by thermal oxidation at bell labs. Commercial concentrated solar power plants were first developed in the 1980s.

This is a solid state way of producing electricity meaning that it has no moving parts. An early solar pioneer of the 19th and 20th century frank shuman built a demonstration plant that used solar power to pump water using an array of mirrors in a trough to generate steam. In the 20th century some used the heat of the sun to make steam for a steam engine to turn a generator. In 1954 this design was first used by bell labs to create the first commercially viable silicon solar cell.

Solar panels collect renewable energy.