Page 295 - ISES SWC50

2001
• NASA’s solar-powered aircraft, Helios, sets a new world record for non-rocket powered aircraft: 96,863
feet, more than 18 miles high.
• The National Space Development Agency of Japan, or NASDA, announced plans to develop a satellite-
based solar power system that would beam energy back to Earth. A satellite carrying large solar panels
would use a laser to transmit the power to an airship at an altitude of about 12 miles, which would then
transmit the power to Earth. It never proceeded.
• TerraSun LLC developed a unique method of using holographic films to concentrate sunlight onto a solar
cell. Concentrating solar cells typically use Fresnel lenses or mirrors to concentrate sunlight. TerraSun
claims that the use of holographic optics allows more selective use of the sunlight, allowing light not
needed for power production to pass through the transparent modules. This capability allows the modules
to be integrated into buildings as skylights
• PowerLight Corporation connected to the grid in Hawaii the world’s largest hybrid system that combines
the power from both wind and solar energy. The grid connected system is unusual in that its solar energy
capacity (175 kilowatts) is actually larger than its wind energy capacity of 50 kilowatts. Such hybrid power
systems combine the strengths of both energy systems to maximize the available power.
• Powerlight Corporation installed the largest rooftop solar power system in the United States - a 1.18
megawatt system - at the Santa Rita Jail in Dublin, California.

2002
• NASA successfully conducted two tests of a solar-powered, remote-controlled aircraft called Pathfinder
Plus. In the first test in July, researchers demonstrated the aircraft’s use as a high-altitude platform for
telecommunications technologies. Then, in September, a test demonstrated its use as an aerial imaging
system for coffee growers.
• ATS Automation Tooling Systems Inc. in Canada commercialised an innovative method of producing
solar cells, called Spheral Solar technology. The technology based on tiny silicon beads bonded between
two sheets of aluminium foil promised lower costs due to its greatly reduced use of silicon relative to
conventional multi-crystalline silicon solar cells. However, the technology was not new. It had been
championed by Texas Instruments (TI) in the early 1990s. But despite U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
funding, TI dropped the initiative.

2003
• On April 29 2003, the world’s largest photovoltaic plant at that time was connected to the public grid in
th
Hemau near Regensburg (Bavaria), Germany. The peak power of the “Solarpark Hemau” plant was 4 MW.
2004
• California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed Solar Roofs Initiative for one million solar roofs in
California by 2017.
• Due to the “EEC” renewable energy law many other large systems of up to 5 MW were built in Germany in
̈
2004. Some of these are Geiseltalsee, Leipzig, Burstadt, Göttelborn solar parks.
• 1GW of solar modules are shipped for the first time.

2005
• Annual installation reaches 1GW.
• China’s Renewable Energy Law was introduced. The Law imposed a national renewable energy requirement
with the objective to boost the use of renewable energy capacity up to 10 percent by the year 2020.

2006
• Polysilicon use in photovoltaics exceeded all other silicon use for the first time.

2007
• University of Delaware claims to achieve new world record in Solar Cell Technology without independent
confirmation (42.8% efficiency).

2008
• Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) set a world
record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converted 40.8% of the light that hit it into
electricity. However, it was only under the concentrated energy of 326 suns that this was achieved. The
inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell was designed, fabricated and independently measured at
NREL.

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