Under the Sun Academy of Sciences, where solar power was employed to play music for the as- sembled crowd. Times saw it as important enough to place on page one, lauding the scientists for possibly ushering in a new era, »lead- ing eventually to the realization of one of mankind’s most cherished dreams – the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.« Lesson two: Don’t believe the hype 20 As John Perlin recounts in »From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Elec- tricity,« the reaction to Bell’s discovery was nothing short of rapturous. One of the scientists who had worked on RCA’s nuclear battery equated the development with »when aircraft went from propeller speeds to jet velocities.« The New York on the bAttlefield: when the u.s. militAry rAn the s pA c e p r o g r A m in the 1950s, it b e c A m e o n e o f the first big c u s t o m e r s f o r pV, w h i c h helped p o w e r c o m m u n i cA t i o n equipment o n sAtellites. mo r e recently, the militAry hA s utilized pV, like this system f r o m un i t e d so l A r, If there’s one timeless lesson to be learned from the earliest days of the silicon solar cell, perhaps it’s this: be exceedingly wary of anybody, whether a journalist or some other self-described to p o w e r c o m m u n i cA t i o n s o n the bAttlefield expert, loudly proclaiming the beginning of a new era in civilization. Very quickly, the issue that has dogged PV right up to this day became all too apparent. It turned out that electricity produced by these magic little silicon cells cost way too much to be anything but a novelty, let alone be used as a power source for America. In fact, as Perlin notes, despite developments at Bell Labs that fairly quickly doubled the efficiency of solar cells, Chapin calculated that – with a one-watt cell costing $286 – it would cost a 1956 homeowner over $1.4 mil- lion to power their home with the sun. This harsh economic reality quickly tempered any enthusiasm Bell Labs managers had for their highly publi- cized new device. After setting up a pi- lot line to make enough cells to actually produce some panels, the lab’s foray into solar came to a rather abrupt end. »They ran that for about half a year and then cut it off because it was too expensive to make these devices,« says Prince. United Solar Systems Corp. That very well might have been the end of PV in America. That is, if another customer, one not exactly known as a bargain hunter, hadn’t come along. In the late 1950s, the Cold War moved be- yond just a geopolitical chess match on terra firma to become a duel thousands of miles above Earth when the Soviets launched their Sputnik satellite in 1957. Determined not to be outdone, the Unit- ed States government accelerated its own space program, quickly developing a fleet of rockets and satellites. What these devices lacked – a lightweight, reliable and long-lasting source of power to run communication equipment – presented the first substantial market for PV. By that time, Prince had left Bell Labs to join Hoffman Electronics, one of the first companies to actually make solar cells, and he made the pitch to military brass, who ran the space program before NASA was created. Later on, the military would employ PV to help supply power to communication devices used by sol- diers, and special forces even utilized PV during the Vietnam War to power heat- sensitive metering gadgets to count foot traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But be- fore all that was possible, Prince had to give them the hard sell. »I showed them what we were able to do and convinced them to use PV for satellites,« he recalls. On St. Patrick’s Day of 1958, the Van- guard satellite was launched, carrying with it electronic equipment powered by Hoffman solar cells. »PV made the space program possible, really,« he says. »And the space program made PV pos- sible, too.« » While the space race may have thrown PV a lifeline – by 1972, 1,000 U.S. and Soviet satellites used it for power – it did very little to bring the price down in a way that would allow for use closer to home, a fact that was highlighted by a visit Prince and his boss, Leslie Hoff- man, paid to the newly formed NASA in 1960. Prince remembers visiting Wash- ington, DC with the hopes of convinc- ing a NASA official to standardize solar cells; up until then, every cell Hoffman made was specially built, and expensive, November 2009
November 2009 21
- Page 1: A LONG, STRANGE TRIP SOUTHERN EXPOS
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80 Architecture November 2009
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82 Architecture November 2009
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84 In Practice Proposals The perfec
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88 In Practice that are predictable
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In Practice bluntly: »We have this
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Events From system inspection to in
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Education & Training Producer-indep
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Internships New internships in the
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Ask the Editors Whether it’s abou
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Industry Registry Here is informati
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Preview The issue 12-2009 appears a