Why the focus on solar energy?
Solar energy is one of the few power generation technologies (if not the only one) that have had a continuous improvement in efficiency and a reduction in manufacturing costs (a version of Moore's law) since the invention of the Photovoltaic cell in 1953 by Daryl Chapin, Calvin Fuller and Gerald Pearson at Bell Labs.
At the time, the PV cell had an efficiency of just 4% and costed $300 to generate just 1 watt of power. To put this into perspective, power from a commercial power plant at the time costed $0.50 per watt.
Today, the Photovoltaic Cell has become the cheapest form of power generation, which begs the question, why aren't solar panels everywhere?
