The first commercial PV solar product was nah just in 1909.
See story above, and original article in Modern Electrics magazine in 1909:
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051407073
EDIT
Since people didn’t read past the headline, the article is about a startup company in 1905 that developed a commercial electrical solar panel by 1909 and was worth 160 million in today’s money.
In 1909, the inventor of the solar panel was kidnapped and ordered by his kidnappers to destroy all information about this solar panel. He was eventually released, although he did not destroy the solar panel or his documentation, he did shut down his company.
So this is a pretty fascinating development considering that at this time period we actually did have early production electric cars that were manufactured in larger quantities than gas vehicles, and now we learn that solar panels were commercially available, at least for a short time.
And the solar panels could generate a fair amount of electricity:
500 volts per 10 square ft, and a smaller demonstration panel that was 3 ft x 4 ft could generate 60 watts of power (10 volts @6 amps).
Additionally, the panels were designed to charge a battery backup system.
I did not read any of your linked articles, but the answer is yes, fossil fuels most certainly would have dominated the 20th century because they are:
- Cheap
- Stable, you don’t have to depend on the sun shining
- Nobody really cared about climate change back then, they were estimating a few centuries and humans… aren’t that forward thinking
Edit: I was beaten by another commentator lol
That being said, free electricity is free electricity. There are so many use cases for distributed small power systems, particularly in rural areas. I would bet that early solar could have found widespread use while yes, fossil fuels would still have dominated.
It’s not free though, solar panels back then would be prohibitively expensive for the number required to get any amount of useful power. I suspect they weren’t all that durable or weatherproof either, so that’s even more cost in periodic replacement.
Meanwhile your neighbour is burning this black stuff that’s almost as cheap as dirt and getting huge amounts of energy out of it.
Coal required someone to dig the mine, build the railroad and powerplant, not to mention build the electricity infrastructure. That was a huge expense and made a lot of people rich.
We do t have a cost information to judge these by, but the infrastructure costs were certainly far lower for solar panels.
I fully agree. In cities and places with a grid, fossil fuels will absolutely dominate, while rural grids/independent homeowners could use solar. However, I do think the cost of acquiring such panels could be prohibitively expensive for some rural homeowners.
Yes, but in 1909 they didn’t have a grid yet.
These solar panels must have been using some older technology fundamentally different from the one used in current solar panels because the PN junction, basis of the photocell, was not invented until 1939
Likey also didn’t contain rare earth minerals - no where near as effective but could have been less damaging and easier to make.
Then again, could have been a combination of arsenic, asbestos and cocaine so who knows.
I want to read more about this, as there is some speculation that the guy may have invented an actual PV panel. Difficult to say without more research… He was also a prolific inventor.
Photoelectric efficiency was pretty bad back then. It had only been discovered in 1887. Einstein had just studied the photoelectric effect in 1905 and won a Nobel prize for analyzing it in 1921.
https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200501/history.cfmIt wasn’t like getting rid of the guy would’ve destroyed knowledge about it or the potential for the business. The devices were listed in the patent office and the technology was public knowledge. It just couldn’t compete with cheaper and more energy dense sources like oil. Electric cars were a thing even in the late 1800s but the technology was so poor they lost to internal combustion.
Interestingly, my parents remember electric milk delivery trucks in the 1950s & 60s.
The technology could have been improved if there was investment. Just look how much has been invested in ice vehicle drivetrains… It’s a wonder they work at all!
Yes.
Doubtful that it would have been very different. We would probably have more solar for home electrification. But with storage options being even less viable back then, we still would have needed a grid.
but the biggest benefit for fossil fuels were cars. And there I don’t see how EVs would have been viable (yes, I know there were prototypes back then)
Fun fact - for a short time, there were more electric cars than gas:
“In 1897, the bestselling car in the US was an electric vehicle: the Pope Manufacturing Company’s Columbia Motor Carriage. Electric models were outselling steam- and petrol-powered ones. By 1900, sales of steam vehicles had taken a narrow lead: that year, 1,681 steam vehicles, 1,575 electric vehicles and 936 petrol-powered vehicles were sold. Only with the launch of the Olds Motor Works’ Curved Dash Oldsmobile in 1903 did petrol-powered vehicles take the lead for the first time.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/03/lost-history-electric-car-future-transport
ITT: people who didn’t read past the headline
Maybe, but the result is the same. The arguments in the article sound good but aren’t really that compelling. The points people make here are good.
This is one of the rare cases where the answer to a headline question is “yes”
Put up a shitty leading headline and this is what you’ll get.
You weren’t allowed to put your own headline up for these types of posts.
The point is, the behavior is to be expected, regardless of how it got there.
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