Solar panels are one of the most underrated inventions of humankind – silently using sunlight to light our homes and power our TVs, computers, and refrigerators – all while being just a few millimetres thick.
But it wasn’t always like this. Solar panels have come a long way, in terms of efficiency, pricing and looks. Here’s a closer look at the history of this wonderful technology.
1880s–1900s: The Beginning
The history of solar power itself is quite old. Humans have been harnessing sunshine in one way or another for thousands of years now. But its conversion to electric current was a huge step, because it allowed us to use the energy for pretty much anything and not just for heating or drying stuff. It was at the doorstep of the 20th century when solar panels first appeared in a form similar to what we see today.
The First Arrays
New York. 1880’s. It was a fascinating time for the famed city. It was the decade that saw the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge, the erection of the Statue of Liberty, the building of the city’s first power plant, and of course, its first rooftop solar array!
Charles Fritts, an inventor who is often hailed as the father of modern solar photovoltaics, created the first solar cell by coating selenium with a layer of gold. He built solar panels and mounted the world’s first array. Although the panels had a much lower efficiency of just 1-2%, it was the first big step in solar energy.
Two decades later, a Canadian entrepreneur named George Cove invented and installed his own sets of solar panels in New York City, called the ‘Sun Electric Generator’. And here’s a cool thing – there even exists a magazine clipping of a 1909 article showing Cove’s solar panels. Take a look:
George Cove’s solar array
Interestingly enough, there is also a story of how the fossil fuel industry kidnapped Cove to halt his progress in solar energy and protect their interests, but that is a story for another time. Let’s now turn to the first silicon-based solar panels.
Bell Labs and Shooting for the Stars
In the 1950s, the folks at Bell Labs were facing a problem – their new, long distance telephone lines needed a remote power boost to send messages across the country. They were working with generators and rechargeable batteries, but it was an inefficient method, which is why they decided to work on a solar generator, starting with a solar cell.
Unlike Fritts, Bell’s researchers used silicon, the material commonly used in solar panels today. In 1954, Bell Labs created what could be called the precursor to modern solar cells, which looked like this:
Bell Labs’ first solar cell (Source: Museum of Solar Energy)
Bell Labs used this solar cell to construct the first solar panel, then hooked it up to a battery, and called the whole setup the ‘Bell Solar Battery’. Here’s an advertisement showing the product:
Bell Solar Battery (Source: NREL)
If you’ve seen a solar panel, you’ll note how similar the panel in the image looks to its modern counterparts. This provided such a boost to the solar industry, then in its infant stage, that within two years the market was teeming with electronics sporting solar cells on them – calculators, watches, walkmans, and more.
In the words of a New York Times article, “The construction of the first solar module to generate useful amounts of power marks the beginning of a new era, leading eventually to the realization of one of mankind’s most cherished dreams – the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.”
One of the biggest applications for the new solar cells was space missions. When the Vanguard 1 satellite was fitted with solar cells, it lasted a whopping 6 years – nearly 100 times that of Sputnik (just 22 days), which used single-use batteries.
Vanguard 1 with solar panels (Source: NASA)
1960s and 70s: Commercialization Begins
In 1963, Sharp Corporation of Japan manufactured the first, truly commercially viable solar cells. A Sharp solar panel in the 60s looked something like this:
Sharp Corporation’s first solar cell module
Sharp’s cells were immediately everywhere, used in hundreds of light buoys, lighthouses, weather stations, and satellites. Today, Sharp still makes high-efficiency solar panels that are considered to have above-average quality and reliability.
Just over a decade after Sharp’s breakthroughs in the solar industry, Solar Power Corporation, an arm of Exxon, built this unique-looking, 15 W fibreglass module:
Solar Power Corporation’s first solar module (Source: Museum of Solar Energy)
According to the Museum of Solar Energy, Solar Power Corporation made ‘huge strides in the cost of solar power in the 70s’.
Around the same time, solar enthusiasts at the University of Delaware built ‘Solar One’, the world’s first home powered entirely using solar. And here’s a fun fact – so many of the solar house’s components were not commercially available that the people working on the project made them by hand.
Solar One at the University of Delaware
1980s-2010 – The Era of Polycrystalline Solar Panels Begins
By 1980, solar power was not the unheard, fancy tech that it was just 10 years ago. Most people were aware of solar panels, but there was one big problem. The cost of solar in 1980 was around USD 30 per watt, which is about a hundred times today’s cost. So, if you installed a simple, 5 kW home solar system in 1980, the panels alone would cost you USD 150,000. Now that’s almost 10 times the cost of a Kiwi house in 1980.
Enter polycrystalline solar. In the early 80s, researchers created the first polycrystalline solar cells. Unlike monocrystalline cells, which need to be made from single, expensive crystals of silicon, polycrystalline cells were made using a large number of silicon chips, which were heat-treated and compacted together to make much cheaper solar cells. Think of furniture made from solid wood vs MDF (recycled wood fibres).
Poly-Si panels, as they are also known, weren’t instantly cheaper by a huge margin, but as manufacturing scaled up, they started surpassing mono-Si panels at a rapid rate.
An early polycrystalline cell from 1990 (source: MOSE)
The effect of polycrystalline solar’s entry was immediately noticeable, as prices started diving. The cost of one watt of solar went down from the above-mentioned USD 30 in 1980 to just USD 8 in 1990. Here’s a graph showing how the cost of solar has changed over the years:
Cost of solar over the years (source: IEA)
It wasn’t just the cost of solar that changed. The cell efficiencies saw a steep rise as well. For instance, the efficiency of silicon solar cells went up from 10% to 20% from 1980 to 2000. By the late 90s, solar panels had efficiencies reaching 15%, which made them a lot more viable for widespread use.
2010 and Further – The Return of Monocrystalline Solar and the Rise of Newer Tech
Sometime in the past decade, there came a point where solar panels became so cheap that cost again became the secondary consideration and a war for efficiencies began. No matter how precision-made poly-Si panels were, they could never be as efficient as monocrystalline panels.
And as the global availability of pure, single crystal silicon improved driven by the high demand, manufacturing monocrystalline solar cells became far less expensive than it once was. As a result, monocrystalline panels started climbing back in popularity. Today, monocrystalline solar is the default option for most projects.
But it isn’t just traditional monocrystalline solar that found traction over the past 10-15 years. Several new technologies have found commercial viability after being around for quite a while. Here’s a couple of examples:
N-type Solar Panels
N-type solar panels use N-type silicon as the base instead of the P-type used in traditional cells. What this means is that the base layer is doped with phosphorus instead of boron, which offers respite from a problem known as light induced degradation (LID). N-type panels therefore perform better in low light, offer better efficiencies and reportedly also have better thermal tolerance.
PERC Solar Panels
Passivated Emitter Rear Cell (PERC) solar panels use an additional reflective layer at the base of each solar cell. This layer reflects light back into the cell for better light absorption and thus allows more electrical activity. Overall, this leads to higher efficiencies.
PERC solar panels are rapidly gaining popularity as they can be manufactured using the same machinery used for traditional solar modules.
Here’s a timeline depicting how solar panels have evolved over the decades:
1884: Charles Fritts installs first solar panel system
1909: George Cove installs another solar array
1954: Bell Labs develops first silicon solar cell
1963: Sharp Corporation makes the first commercially viable cells
1980-85: Polycrystalline solar makes first appearance
2000: Prices have dropped by 80% compared to 1980
2010-20: Monocrystalline solar panels make a comeback
2020-25: New technologies start becoming mainstream
Summing it Up
Solar panels may not have the sort of fan-following that sports cars do, but they are some of the most inspiring pieces of technology. A look at how solar panels have evolved proves that they are a testament to humankind’s inventive spirit.
Starting from inefficient, selenium cells and hand-built, bulky modules, we have come to high-performance panels that are sleek, powerful and astoundingly durable. The steep drop in the cost of solar panels and an almost equally steep rise in their efficiencies has not only made solar panels an attractive power source but in many cases made it the best option to power homes and businesses.
In conclusion, we’ll say it again, at the risk of stating the obvious – this is the best time to go solar! And we’re here to help you – get free, no-obligation solar quotes from vetted installers and start your journey to energy independence and bill savings.
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