Solar Energy: The Next Hot Thing (in 1955)
June 12th, 2008
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New solar cells are being developed for the conversion of sunlight directly into energy and are being installed in remote locations. Meanwhile, other researchers see the future in concentrated solar-thermal systems, which do not need expensive semiconductor materials but instead drive a small thermal engine. At universities, “future homes” with solar collectors are being built. A source of clean limitless energy may lay just around the corner.
The year is 1955.
I found this fascinating scan of a magazine article from 1955 on the ‘HOT NEWS’ about solar energy.
This comes from the excellent blog “Modern Mechanics” which I suggest you check out for complete articles from science and technology publications from yesteryear. It is quite amazing how history can repeat itself. In 1955, solar cells, known at the time as “solar batteries” were a new invention from Bell Labs and, just as today, they were proving to be a great source of energy for low power needs in remote locations. Also, just like today, attempts were being made to make them a viable bulk power source, with big dreams and small results. Today, they’re a bit cheaper and a bit more effecient, but the more things change the more they stay the same.
Also, at the time, inventors and researchers were perusing “concentrated solar thermal” power, using it for industrial purposes and power generation through small thermal engines. It was discovered that solar energy did work reasonably well for things like water heating and desalination, but for power generation, there were big dreams for the near future, but little in the way of practical results.
From the article:
Dr. Maria Telkes of New York University, one of the world’s foremost authorities in the field also spoke to the businessmen and outlined what is ahead. Hear this: “Small household appliances utilizing the power of the sun will be in widespread use very soon,” Dr. Telkes said. She expects them within the next five years! “Especially in tropical regions where conventional fuels are at a premium,” She points out “small devices powered by the sun can soon be a reality…”
Sound familiar???
I suppose that if your definition of “small” includes four function calculators, portable radios and alike, then it’s not that far off, but the idea of ditching electrical service in favor of solar cells on all your electrical devices has not come to pass, although many still claim it will.
If anything, the 1955 article may have been *more* accurate than the information out there these days, because it did concentrate heavily on the fact that solar energy can be used for heating water and providing limited structure heat. This is the one use where it actually has proven to have a high ROI and be quite workable, yet it also seems to be the one with the least fanfare these days.
This entry was posted on Thursday, June 12th, 2008 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Enviornment, Good Science, History. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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June 12th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
I don’t think people realize just how long people have been trying to make the “new” technology of solar energy work. I discovered that one of the engineers of the New Haven Railroad’s electrification actually patented a solar plant in 1911 and may have gone broke trying to build it in Arizona in the early years of the last century.
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June 13th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Solar water heating is really the one logical use for solar energy because for one thing, you skip the conversion step, which means you can keep almost all the energy and secondly, it does not need to always work to be worthwhile. Even if it only means you don’t need the water heater in the summer, it still can be a good return, given the system is pretty straight forward and easy to do. Why isn’t this more promoted, especially in sunny areas? Beats me. it could actually save some fuel. Not a lot, but more than those idiotic power towers that cost a half bill and generate a few MW.
The only thing about solar hot water is that the older systems can be leaky and they rust and get really ugly. I really think there should be more focus on improving solar water heating and maybe solar for supplementing heating on cold nights. That seems like the way to go. If it were more popular it might drive down the price of the new slim and weatherproof panels. There’s nothing inherently expensive about them, because they’re just tubes and hoses.
I put some in on my old house and I want to soon in the home I’m in now. Solar panels in a system which was combined with a propane water heater. It had a small low power pump and also had convection to aid it and a thermometer to close a valve if it was cold enough outside that you’d loose heat instead of gain it.
It worked so well I used almost no propane in the summer at all for water heating and up to 50%+ less in the winter even. I lived in North Carolina, BTW. These work really well for pools too.
Why are they pushing PV so hard when it’s so worthless over water heaters?
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June 13th, 2008 at 5:26 am
Solar is appropriate for space craft, and isolated communication, and calculators. Period.
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June 13th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
In Europe solar water heating is pretty popular. It is also subsidized, but by far not as much as solar PV. But here in the US it’s basically a non-starter without incentives. I think one reason is that Americans on the average live for 5 years in a house before they sell it. I don’t know if solar water heating repays itself in that short a time frame. Because it is so little known, I don’t think one would recoup the cost when seeling the house. Another issue for space heating is that in many of the sunnier areas of the US gas fired forced air heating is used. Warm water floor heating is better suited to solar thermal. In Europe they are starting to use latent heat for overnight solar heat storage. In many of those systems a tank of paraffin wax is melted during the day by solar hot water. The heat energy given off when it solidifies is then used at night.
Solar thermal electrical plants and PV plants though are much better suited for the purposes of politicians though. They make them look “green” to their constituents and they do not threaten the business of their fossil fuel campaign donors.
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June 13th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
Yeah, I guess solar water heating works decently, but does it get the kind of attention in Europe that PV gets? I mean do you see big “green” campaigns for it? I’m guessing not. It probably is like most things, where it is not that attractive because even if it gives some decent positive results, it doesn’t carry that false promise of powering the world, since it’s obvious to people that all it does is help with the hot water and so it’s hard to say it will change things that much.
Personally, I don’t think solar hot water is really going to do that much. Yes, it helps, but it’s really only one small step toward helping.
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June 13th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
One big problem with solar water: It almost doubles the cost of having your house re-roofed.
Same problem with PV.
Anyone who doesn’t factor that in to their math will be bitten.
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June 13th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Anyone run the numbers on using solar concentration to drive an ammonia absorbtion refrigeration loop to provide air conditioning in the summer? It seems to me that the greatest need for air conditioning occurs right at the time of greatest sunlight, at least most of the time. No storage issues…
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June 13th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Burya Rubenstein said:
I don’t know but I’ve seen some systems which are supposed to use solar energy as part of an A/C thing with absorption chillers and they need an real lot of collector space even not to use 100% solar and so it seems that it’s not very realistic to me for most people.
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June 13th, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Chuck said:
That’s worth noting, but I put in the panels on the house when I was putting on an addition and reroofing the whole house anyway. Since the whole roof was being replaced I was not expecting to need the house re-roofed for another 20 years or so.
But yeah, the price of adding solar hot water was not bad because of the fact that there was already a lot of work being done and that made a difference. I lived in the house another 9 years. I figure I probably recouped the cost of the solar hot water, because it was a small price increase, but I doubt that the other work on the house really increased its value as much as the time and money put in, although the house did sell for more that was because of the market at the time.
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June 13th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Last year I was in a job where I occasionally took calls in the wee small hours from people who had issues going on with their houses so severe and urgent that they could not wait for until daytime for an insurance assessor, and needed to get the process rolling immediately. One such call came after the severe hailstorms which hit Sydney last November.
The client’s roof had received a terrible battering, but so had thousands of others. What he had not been aware of at the time was that the piping which led from the solar water heater on his roof to the swimming pool and back again had been damaged, and the pump was of course undamaged… with the consequence that a fair portion of the contents of his pool ended up in the roof, and subsequently made itself known by flooding through the electrical fixtures. Fortunately for him, no fires started and the house didn’t burn down.
I’ve been warning people for years about the dangers of the reckless use of solar power…
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June 14th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
wow. I’d have thought the panels would have a plexiglass cover or something to protect them from that.
They probably should have turned off the pump anyway.
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June 14th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
The solar water heater was fine. It was the pipes which had been damaged.
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June 14th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Wow. I really hate this website and all the bad things that it’s saying about helping the planet and being more sustainable and green. I don’t understand how anyone could be so deep down bad and cynical and just evil to go around with this kind of thing. You all have to live here too! You all are like the worst people ever.
I know this sounds bad, but I kinda hope you would all die because you deserve it and the world needs less people like this to ruin it!
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June 14th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
It sounds more ignorant and dogmatic than “bad.” I don’t blame you for wanting us dead. People like you are just drones for whatever the latest fad is. Really you look like the fool though, because you obviously don’t really look at what the message is here. The author of this website LIKES the enviornment and planet and WANTS TO HELP AVOID IMPACTING IT. I do too.
Probably a good thing you used an obvious fake name because you just look like a fool!
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June 15th, 2008 at 6:47 am
It is much easier to win a debate when your opponent is deceased. It’s not as if they’ll get a chance to formulate a rebuttal.
I wonder if this often-expressed wish of the Ecotardiatti for the swift death of all who would gainsay their viewpoint springs from a subconcious recognition that the only way they’re going to win this debate is by arguing against a silent opposition.
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June 15th, 2008 at 8:45 am
I think Finrod and Kim have got their number.
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June 15th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
I honestly can’t tell if that’s a troll or not.
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June 16th, 2008 at 4:25 am
Soylent said:
I don’t know whether that commenter is real or not, but there are no doubt people who honestly believe that crap. Does that make them a troll? Geez, I don’t know. But people do believe that stuff because that’s all they know
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June 16th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
As I mused before, those who claim to be peaceful, tolerant, and well-meaning are usually the first to threaten violence when your viewpoint doesn’t quite mesh with whichever delusion they’re suffering from…
The fact that we have trouble telling genuine trolls apart from people like that should scare most of you.
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June 18th, 2008 at 2:01 am
Sung Li Kim said:
You see this in religion too. People who believe they are right because of dogma or just because some given idea or idol is holy in and of itself are the most violent prone because it’s the only way to really cement their argument and it is by its own nature something which is impossible to refute and any who refute it is evil.
I try to base my views on this kind of issue on things like science and math. This gives me the confidence that I’m right, but it also means I’m willing to admit that I’m wrong if you can show me an error in my calculations. If my data or calculations are wrong, then I have to admit I was wrong. There is no “holiness” to it and I can’t respond by saying “YOU HERETIC! DAMN YOU TO HELL!”
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June 21st, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Lord Helmet said:
Some grist for the mill of mathematics might be provided in a few years through an analysis of the impact of a new Green regulation upon the unfortunate citizens of Marburg, who from next year shall be required (when building a new house, or replacing the roofing of an existing house) to install 1 square meter of solar PV panel for each 20 Square meters of roof.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/080621120419.0k0wigmp.html
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June 21st, 2008 at 9:27 pm
Hmm. It seems that the fine for non-compliance with the new regulation will be 1,000 Euros, whereas the cost of installing such a panel is said to be 5,000 Euros. Proponents of the legislation reckon that the 5,000 Euro cost per panel will be paid back in savings over a 15 year period.
Lets see how many people in Marburg believe this strongly enough to pay for the panels rather than copping the fine.
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