PV Gap

Joan Said:

Who was the first person that found the way to use Solar energy?

We Answered:

Passive solar energy has been used for millennium.
The Anasazi cliff dwellings demonstrate passive solar design.

Photovoltaics got it's start in 1839 when the French physicist Edmond Becquerel first observed photovoltaic activity.

In 1921 Einstein Albert Einstein received the Nobel Prize and clearly described the photoelectric effect, the principle on which photovoltaics are based.

The first practical photocells were developed at AT&T labs in the 1950's. Solar panels were first used to power satellites in 1958.

Mario Said:

Is the use of solar energy a good way to use the world’s resources?

We Answered:

The world is solar powered. We just convert it to various forms with different efficiencies.

Don Said:

Solar Energy- Can you help?

We Answered:

More energy from sunlight strikes the Earth in one hour than all of the fossil energy consumed on the planet in one year.

Photovoltaic conversion, the direct generation of electricity from sunlight, is a clean and inexhaustible source of electricity generation. Photovoltaics (or PV cells) are now commercially available, but the cost per watt is still much too high for wide-scale practical implementation, and challenges exist in scaling this technology to the terawatt ( One trillion watts) scale.

The conversion of sunlight into chemical fuels, an example of which is the splitting of water to make hydrogen. Although the electrolysis of water is straightforward, currently available methods require a power source and a platinum catalyst. By using solar energy to replace conventional electrical power sources that ultimately use fossil fuel, and by developing alternative catalysts to platinum (which is expensive and scarce),