Brief History of Solar Energy - Lighting & Mechanical

Solar lighting power is the flow of energy from the sun. The primary forms of solar energy are heat and light. Sunlight and heat are transformed and absorbed by the environment in a lot of ways. A majority of these transformations result in renewable energy sources such as biomass, wind and waves. Effects such as the jet stream, the water cycle, and the Gulf Stream are also the result of solar energy's absorption in the environment.

Solar energy is a very broad term for what is actually provides on a daily basis regarding the utilization of natural sunlight. The more advance applications are diverse and date back over 100 years ago. Further than that, the Greeks, Native Americans and Chinese warmed their buildings by orienting them toward the sun. European farmers used elaborate field orientation and thermal mass to increase crop yields during what is now called the "Little Ice Age". Today, modern solar technologies continue to harness the sun to provide water heating, daylighting and even flight.

The term solar power specifically describes technologies that converts sunlight into electricity or mechanical power. Back in 1866, the French engineer Auguste Mouchout successfully powered a steam engine with sunlight - the first known solar mechanical breakthrough. Over the next half-century, inventors such as John Ericsson, Charles Tellier and Frank Shuman developed solar powered devices for irrigation, refrigeration and locomotion. The progeny of these early developments are concentrating solar power plants.

The modern age of solar power arrived in 1954 when researchers at Bell Laboratories developed a solar cell capable of effectively converting light into electricity. This breakthrough marked a fundamental change in how power is generated. Since then, solar cells efficiencies have improved from 6% to over 40% and prices have fallen from $300 per watt to less than $3 per watt. Because of the power and price reduction, solar power alternatives in both mechanical and lighting are quickly becoming a very popular alternative.

The utilization of solar energy spans from traditional technologies that provide food, heat and light to electricity which is uniquely modern. The diversity of form and long history of solar energy are manifest in a wide variety of applications. These include: * Heat (hot water, building heat, cooking, process heat) * Lighting (daylighting, hybrid lighting, daylight savings time) * Electricity generation (photovoltaics, heat engines) * Transportation (solar car, solar plane, solar boat) * Desalination * Biomass (wood, biofuel) * Clothes drying