About Solar Power

Early Days

The early development of solar technologies starting in the 1860s was driven by an expectation that coal would soon become scarce, such as experiments by Augustin Mouchot. Charles Fritts installed the world's first rooftop photovoltaic solar array, using 1%-efficient selenium cells, on a New York City roof in 1884.

By the 1970s, solar power was being used on satellites, but the cost of solar power was considered to be unrealistic for conventional applications. In 1974 it was estimated that only six private homes in all of North America were entirely heated or cooled by functional solar power systems

Mid-1990s to 2010

In the mid-1990s development of both, residential and commercial rooftop solar as well as utility-scale photovoltaic power stations began to accelerate again due to supply issues with oil and natural gas, global warming concerns, and the improving economic position of PV relative to other energy technologies. In the early 2000s, the adoption of feed-in tariffs—a policy mechanism, that gives renewables priority on the grid and defines a fixed price for the generated electricity—led to a high level of investment security and to a soaring number of PV deployments in Europe.

2010s

For several years, worldwide growth of solar PV was driven by European deployment, but it has since shifted to Asia, especially China and Japan, and to a growing number of countries and regions all over the world. The largest manufacturers of solar equipment were based in China. Although concentrated solar power capacity grew more than tenfold, it remained a tiny proportion of the total, because the cost of utility-scale solar PV fell by 85% between 2010 and 2020, while CSP costs have only fallen 68% in the same timeframe.

2020s

Despite the rising cost of materials, such as polysilicon, during the 2021–2022 global energy crisis, utility scale solar was still the cheapest energy source in many countries due to the rising costs of other energy sources, such as natural gas. In 2022, global solar generation capacity exceeded 1 TW for the first time. However, fossil-fuel subsidies have slowed the growth of solar generation capacity.