Should the solar cell be pensioned off?
The photovoltaic effect was first experimentally demonstrated by French physicist Edmond Becquerel. In 1839, at age 19, he built the world’s first photovoltaic cell.
But in April 25, 1954, scientists at Bell Laboratories demonstrated a breakthrough with a solar cell capable of directly converting enough sunlight into electricity to generate useful amounts of power.
The first practical photovoltaic cell was developed at Bell Laboratories by Daryl Chapin, Calvin Souther Fuller and Gerald Pearson. They used a diffused silicon p–n junction that reached 6% efficiency which compared to selenium cells that found it difficult to reach 0.5%. From that point Les Hoffman CEO of Hoffman Electronics Corporation pioneered the fabrication and mass production of solar cells with his company’s Semiconductor Division. From 1954 to 1960 Hoffman improved the efficiency of Solar Cells from 2% to 14%.
Since then there has been steady progress in the solar cell sector and in September 2013 the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems achieved a world record with 44.7 percent efficiency.
The German research institute in partnership with Soitec, CEA-Leti and the Helmholtz Center Berlin achieved the world record for the conversion of sunlight into electricity using a new solar cell structure with four solar subcells.
As efficiency rates have grown the price of solar cells has fallen sharply. In 1971 cell costs were typically estimated to be $100 per watt. Since then the price for practical solar power has dropped below the $1/watt level in 2012 and has proceeded downwards ever since. As a result of improvements in efficiency and price decreases global installations have soared from less than a watt to over a 100 billion watts today.
Analysts predict the total may jump to 200 billion watts by 2015.
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