SOLAR ENERGY AND PHOTOVOLTAICS

Amongst all energy resources, solar energy is the most abundant one and compared to the rate at which all energy is used on this planet the rate at which solar energy is intercepted by the Earth is about 10,000 times higher. There is a whole family of solar technologies which can deliver heat, cooling, electricity, lighting, and fuels for a host of applications. One of these technologies is photovoltaics which converts solar energy directly into electricity using semiconductors that exhibit the photovoltaic effect and are called solar cells. The photovoltaic effect was already discovered by Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839, but it took more than a hundred years, until in 1954 scientists at the Bell Laboratories developed the first modern solar cell, using a silicon semiconductor to convert light into electricity. Since those early days of modern photovoltaics, prices for solar modules have decreased from over USD 1,500 per Wp in 1955 (in 1955 USD) to less than USD 1 per Wp in 2014 (in 2014 USD). During the same time, commercial production increased from a few hundred Watts to power satellites – in 1958 Vanguard I, the first satellite powered by solar cells went into orbit – to a production volume of about 50 GW in 2014. What role do the lightest natural metals Lithium, Beryllium, Bohrium, Magnesium, Aluminium and Calcium play in this dynamic technology field?

JAEGER-WALDAU Arnulf; 

2016-01-12

Wiley

JRC96503

978-1-118-70328-1,   

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781119951438.eibc2312/abstract,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC96503,   

10.1002/9781119951438.eibc2312,