10. Charles Fritts
1883 — Charles Fritts, an American inventor, was the first to conceive the idea of solar energy. In 1883, he coated the semiconductor selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold. The resulting cell had a conversion efficiency of only about 1%. Additionally, the hefty cost of the materials prevented the cells from being made in large quantities. Today, however, Fritts’ discovery has led to solar cells that are over 20% efficient.
Walter T Welford’s pioneering work in 1978 is still being referenced today as being influential.https://www.abebooks.com/Optics-Nonimaging-Concentrators-Light-Solar-Energy/21371628899/bd
He was honoured to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Physics (like Einstein & Newton) based on some of this work.
Number 10: Definitely one of the most influential!
John M
California Solar Systems
http://855casolar.com
Hi,
I was very surprised to see that the “Father of Modern Solar Energy” Stanford R. Ovshinsky (1922-2012), the physicist and inventor who had been granted some 400 patents over the course of his life, most related to energy, many related to solar energy. His most famous invention was of continuous web multi-junction flexible thin-film photovoltaic laminates and panels — amorphous thin-film solar cells, for short, consisting of many thin, flexible layers in sheets. Thin-film, versus bulk silicon (also called crystalline) panels, which is what most of us have on our rooftops today, have the advantage of being flexible and very low in weight, suitable particularly for building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) uses.
I”m surprised you left off Stan Ovishinsky.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_R._Ovshinsky#Energy_Conversion_Laboratory
Stan did tremendous work in thin films, amorphous and low cost PV.
Hermann Scheer, who masterminded the German EEG that kickstarted the mass production and caused the massive price drops of the past few years.
I guess this is not who youshould know in Solar but who in PV. There are over 300 MW of solar thermal installed each year in North America. Albeit not a “cool” as PV but Solar non the less. There were guys like George Lof, Freeman Ford, Wm Bailey,Bud Carruthers. I’m just saying there is a Solar technology that is still delivering solar energy at less than 5 cents per kWh….solar thermal 🙂
(Smith) …and the first scientist to pioneer the use of sideburns as effective solar collectors.
(Becquerel) And a very impressive NHL playoff beard going on as well…(go kings)
Well, you may not know it…but at least other people do.
His actual name is Augustin Mouchot. He wrote a book “La chaleur solaire et ses applications industrielles” (I don’t know if it was translated in English) that can be bought on line.
Frédéric:
Thanks for letting us know. We took his name from the Department of Energy website, so we apologize for getting it wrong. We have fixed it on the page (see above).
For the record, I translated the title of his book for you:
Solar heat and its industrial applications
Thanks again for the information. We truly do appreciate it.
Kerr MacGregor: Scotland’s solar pioneer!
Bio: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/09/kerr-macgregor-obituary
Video:http://youtu.be/-rgIIHvjcw0
Number 22: Elon Musk? He probably won’t bring forth a new scientific discovery. Not that he hasn’t earned his bones in scientific research. But like an Andrew Carnegie or a Steve Jobs. I think Elon will be included on this list in the future for helping solar become more mainstream via Solar City and his especially with his work at Tesla.
Approve.