om Australia, the quasi-public agency in charge of the nation’s telecommunications, to provide every citizen, no matter how remotely situated, with the same high-quality telephone and television service that those living in urban areas took for granted. To accomplish the mandate, Telecom Australia searched for an reliable stand-alone power source to run rural telephones and microwave repeater stations. Generators and wind machines did not pass muster. Fortunately, solar cells had come down in price to put them in the running as well. Putting them through a vigorous testing program, Telecom Australia came up with a module design that would only need periodic servicing checks despite the harsh conditions of the Australian outback. Thirteen solar-powered repeaters went up in 1978, each situated twenty-five miles apart. They worked so well that Telecom Australia put up seventy more – the longest network consisting of forty three repeaters spanning fifteen hundred miles. The Australian experience helped make, by 1985, solar modules the power system of choice for remote telecommunications.
1970s – Father Verspieren Preaches the Solar Gospel
The “perfect marriage” of sun and water, made possible by solar cells, made the sun a friend, rather than an enemy, in the drought-stricken sub-Sahara, by providing, instead of denying, precious water for people and livestock.
Dominique Campana, a graduate student in Paris in the 1970s, came up with the idea of applying solar cells to pump water. French physicist Jean Roger translated her concept into a working prototype on the island of Corsica. People from all over the world concerned about supplying healthy water to those where no power existed came to see the solar-run pump. Among the visitors was Father Verspieren – a French priest whom the Malian government put in charge to tap the deep aquifers that run underneath the sands of Mali to save the country then suffering from the worst drought of the twentieth century. After viewing the Corsican installation, Verspieren saw the sun as the solution, not the problem. Starting in the late 1970s, Verspieren initiated a solar water pumping program that has become the template for success in the developing world. Fewer than ten pumps powered by solar cells existed in the world when Father Verspieren installed his first in Mali. Now, tens of thousands power pumps on every continent. As one expert stated, “Thank you, Father Verspieren that today we have lots of solar pumps everywhere and for showing the international community that solar cells are an excellent power source for the people of Africa and the rest of the developing world.
1980s – Electrifying the Unelectrified
|A common sight in French Polynesia: solar modules on thatched roofs|
From the 1960s through the 1980s, experts planned to power rural parts of the developing world – where the majority live – according to the Western model: build centralized generating plants and by networks of wires transmit the electricity to consumers. But constructing such networks has proven too costly, leaving billions of rural people without electricity. These people have had to rely on costly and inadequate ad hoc solutions to light their homes and power their appliances such as kerosene lamps, automobile batteries and generators. In many cases, solar cells have provided to those living far away from electrical lines the means to obtain higher quality lighting and more reliable power. Since 1983, half of the households in the outlying islands of Tahiti have relied on solar-generated power. More rural Kenyans use electricity from the sun than that offered by the national utility. At least one hundred thousand families in Mexico, Central America and the West Indies run their lights, television sets, and radios with solar electricity. These successes has led the World Energy Council, the international organization of utilities, to recognize, “Solar cells for use at individual houses are a very important development that warrants particular attention as they are ideal for low-power rural applications.
1980