st solar cell capable of converting enough of the sun’s energy into power to run everyday electrical equipment. Reporting the Bell discovery, The New York Times praised it as “the beginning of a new era, leading eventually to the realization of harnessing the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.
1956 Searching for Applications
During the first years after the discovery of the silicon solar cell, its prohibitive cost kept it out of the electrical power market. Desperate to find commercial outlets for solar cells, novelty items such as toys and radios run by solar cells were manufactured and sold as this advertisement illustrates.
Although technical progress of silicon solar cells continued at breakneck speed – doubling their efficiency in eighteen months – commercial success eluded the Bell solar cell. A one-watt cell cost almost $300 per watt in 1956 while a commercial power plant cost 50 cents a watt to build at that time. The only demand for silicon solar cells came from radio and toy manufacturers to power miniature ships in wading pools, propellers of model DC-4′s, and beach radios. With solar cells running only playthings, Daryl Chapin could not help but wonder, “What to do with our new baby?”
Late 1950s – Saved by the Space Race
|The late Dr. Hans Ziegler, the chief advocate for powering satellites with silicon solar cells|
While efforts to commercialize the silicon solar cell faltered, the Army and Air Force saw the device as the ideal power source for a top-secret project – earth-orbiting satellites. But when the Navy was awarded the task of launching America’s first satellite, it rejected solar cells as an untried technology and decided to use chemical batteries as the power source for its Vanguard satellite. The late Dr. Hans Ziegler, probably the world’s foremost expert in satellite instrumentation in the late 1950s, strongly differed with the Navy. He argued that conventional batteries would run out of power in days, silencing millions of dollar worth of electronic equipment. In contrast, solar cells could power a satellite for years. Through an unrelenting crusade led by Dr. Ziegler to get the Navy to change its mind, the Navy finally relented and as a compromise, put a dual power system of chemical batteries and silicon solar cells on the Vanguard. Just as Ziegler predicted, the batteries failed after a week or so, but the silicon solar cells kept the Vanguard communicating with Earth for years.
Early 1960s – Bringing Solar Cells Down to Earth
|Hoffman Electronics, the leading manufacturer of silicon solar cells in the 1950s and 1960s, showed a variety of space satellites powered by the sun in a company brochure.|
Despite solar cells’ success in powering both American and Soviet satellites during the 1950s and early 1960s, many at NASA doubted the technology’s ability to power its more ambitious space ventures. The agency viewed solar cells as merely a stopgap measure until nuclear power systems became available. But solar engineers proved the skeptics wrong. They met the increasing power demands by designing ever larger and more powerful solar cell arrays. Nuclear energy, in contrast, never powered more than a handful of satellites. Hence, since the late 1960s, solar cells have become the accepted power source for the world’s satellites. The increasing demand for solar cells in space opened an increasing and relatively large business for those manufacturing solar cells. Even more significantly, our past, present and future application of space would have been impossible if not for solar cells. The telecommunication revolution would never have gotten off the ground if not for solar powered satellites. Unbeknown to most, solar energy has played a crucial role in society’s technological progress over the past forty years.
Early 1970s – The First Mass Earth Market
|Solar cells power navigation warning lights and horns on most off-shore gas and oil rigs throughout the world|
While the use of solar cells in space flourished during the 1960s and early 1970s, down on Earth electricity f