The history of solar panels

Technology

Human race is facing some stock choices in terms of its energy provision if it wants to keep its carbon footprint low.  The answer seems to come from renewable energy sources like wind and solar power.  Many of us are being asked to add solar panels to our homes to at least make sure that the house itself is self-sufficient. This Solar Panel Installation Portishead based company in the link I just wanted the many providers of this new and vital service.  It seems like the photo taken cell has been around for many years but it is a relatively new invention.  where to store begin.

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It was a French physicist named Edmond Becquerel. He noticed that certain materials gave off an electrical charge when exposed to a light source. He then began to create a panel that could  store this energy.  However, the panels were completely inefficient at being able to power anything and were simply used as a way to  gauge a degree of light and its strength.

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This was in 1863 but it wasn’t until 10 years later that the English electrician Willoughby Smith found that a charge could be generated when light hit the material selenium. To prove that what Smith had found was true when Willam Adams and Richard Day were able to copy his work and got the same results.

By 1881 the first commercial available panels were making an appearance. They were nowhere near as efficient as a coal powered source but the turning point came in 1939 with Russell Ohl’s cell which forms the basis of the modern panel we have today.