Page 80 - ISES SWC50

1979
• ARCO Solar of Camarillo, California, built the biggest solar cell and photovoltaic module production plant
(1MW) at that time.
• In Mt. Laguna, California, a trial 60 kW hybrid diesel-photovoltaic system was built as a power supply for
a radar station.
• Strategies Unlimited is founded by John Day and it became the primary reference source on development
and status of terrestrial solar industry over the following decades.
• Lucas Energy Systems is formed.

Dates Unknown
• IES-UPM (Institu de Energia solar at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid) (Spain) under Professor Antonio
Luque stated work on PV in late 1970’s.
• Stanford University Professor Dick Swanson led research on Silicon solar cells from late 1970’s.

7.4 Solar Thermal 1970-1979

In 1977 the International Energy Agency Solar Heating and Cooling Technology Collaboration Programme (IEA
SHC) started and one key activity has been the presentation of the market data in the annual publication Solar
Heat Worldwide. Solar Heat Worldwide was first published in the early 2000’s, however, some countries were
collecting data on the annual installed solar water panel installation capacity recorded in square metres (m )
2
since the 1970s. Over the last 10 to 20 years the IEA SHC has collected data on as many countries as possible
along with doing estimates in some of the other countries. To show the growth in the industry this booklet
will show in each decade the figures that have been collected by the IEA SHC. In the 1970’s information was
collected for Australia, Austria and USA only. Figures 23, 24 and 25 show the annual installation capacity for
those three countries. These are shown on three separate graphs because the markets were different sizes
and hence shows the growth in each market. (Note Canada data was obtained but only for 1979).

Figure 23: Australian annual installed solar water panel capacity 1970-1979
Source: IEA SHC

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