rom the sun seemed as distant as ever. Cost was never a factor for space cells. Manufacturers worried more about size, efficiency and durability: the cost of the launch, and the continuing operation of equipment once in space far outweighed the price of power in space applications. But on Earth, the primary criteria is price per kilowatt hour. Solar-cell technology proved too expensive for terrestrial use until the early 1970s when Dr. Elliot Berman, with financial help from Exxon Corporation, designed a significantly less costly solar cell by using a poorer grade of silicon and packaging the cells with cheaper materials. Bringing the price down from $100 a watt to $20 per watt, solar cells could now compete in situations where people needed electricity distant from power lines. Off-shore oil rigs, for example, required warning lights and horns to prevent ships from running into them but had no power other than toxic, cumbersome, short-lived batteries. Compared to their installation, maintenance and replacement, solar modules proved a bargain. Many gas and oil fields on land but far away from power lines needed small amounts of electricity to combat corrosion in well heads and piping. Once again, electricity from the sun saved the day. Major purchases of solar modules by the gas and oil industry gave the fledgling terrestrial solar cell industry the needed capital to persevere.
1970s – Captain Lomer’s Saga
|Solar cells power the lights of almost every lighthouse run by the U.S. Coast Guard|
It cost the Coast Guard more money to install, maintain and replace the non rechargeable batteries that powered its buoys than the buoys themselves. A brave Coast Guard officer, then Lieutenant Commander Lloyd Lomer, who had training in optics and physics, believed that their replacement by solar modules could save taxpayers millions of dollars and do the job better. But his commander refused to listen. Exasperated by such stonewalling, Lomer finally appealed to higher authorities and got the nod to solarize the Coast Guard’s 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 Telec