navigational aids. President Ronald Reagan commended Lomer for “saving a substantial amount of the taxpayer’s money through your initiative and managerial effectiveness as project manager for the conversion of aids to navigation from battery to solar photovoltaic power.” Thanks to Lomer’s persistence, not only does the U.S. Coast Guard rely almost entirely on solar power for all of its buoys and light houses but so do all the other Coast Guards throughout the world.
1974 – Working on the Railroad
|The first solar-powered crossing depicted in this picture began operating at Rex, Georgia in 1974 for the Southern Railway (now the Norfolk/Southern)|
When the Southern Railway put in solar modules to power warning lights at a railroad crossing near Rex, Georgia, the railroad had so little confidence that the cells would work that they also connected the lights to a utility line for back up. But that winter, ice build up on the wires caused them to fall, and the only electricity in Rex, Georgia came from the solar array. Around the same time, novel telecommunication systems such as microwave repeaters had made telephone and power poles that followed the tracks obsolete. and many railroad lines wanted to remove these poles to save on maintenance. To avoid train accidents, the railroads still needed a few watts here and there to power signaling and shunting equipment along their lines. Word spread about the Southern’s success with solar, leading many lines in the United States and throughout the world to choose the sun to run on site their track safety devices rather than waste huge sums to bring in distant centrally-generated electricity.
Late 1970s – Long Distance for Everyone
|One of Telecom Australia’s (now Telstra) many solar-powered microwave repeaters, whose installation began in the late 1970s, to provide Australians living in remote areas with same high-quality telecommunication service as those living in larger cities such as Sydney and Melbourne had.|
In the early 1970s, the Australian government mandated Telecom 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 su