Why solar is right for America 🇺🇸

The patriotic pitch for photovoltaics

Note: The views expressed here are my own and do not reflect the views of Powerhouse Innovation.

It’s weird times for solar energy in America. On the one hand, solar is all the rage. On the other… it maybe took down the grid in Spain? Regardless, I was pleased to learn recently that the United States now has enough domestic solar module manufacturing capacity to meet all domestic demand in the United States. That’s 52 GW of operating capacity, while EIA-860 estimates about 30 GW of utility scale solar was installed in 2024. 

This particularly pleased me because I think photovoltaics are a uniquely American invention.¹

In 1953 a physicist named Gerald Pearson took a piece of silicon and dipped it into a hot lithium bath. In so doing he and Calvin Fuller created the world’s first practical solar cell. Pearson quickly informed his friend Daryl Chapin, who had been unsuccessfully trying to make a solar cell out of selenium (his best selenium cell produced 4.9 Watts per square meter).²

A year later, Chapin, Fuller, and Pearson had improved their efficiency up to 60 W/m^2, filed a patent, and were on the front page of the New York Times: Vast Power of the Sun Is Tapped By Battery Using Sand Ingredient.³ They wrote: “It may mark the beginning of a new era, leading eventually to the realization of one of mankind’s most cherished dreams — the harnessing of the almost limitless energy of the sun for the uses of civilization.”

These were giddy times. The original patent was filed in 1954, and opens with: “The idea of converting solar radiation into electrical energy is one that has occupied mens minds for years. Sunlight is the most common, most accessible, and most economical form of energy on the earths surface.” The drawing is great, I might print it out and frame it. The whole thing is worth a read. If you ever needed more proof that solar and storage are meant to be together, the patent even included battery storage! 

Given the theme of this post, I think it’s notable that the first field test of a solar module was in a town called Americus, Georgia. Bell Labs needed a remote power source for telephone repeaters because dry cell batteries degraded too quickly in humid climates. The first module produced 32 Watts in full sun. Apparently there’s a sign.

This brings me to the patriotic pitch. There are four characteristics of photovoltaics that I think are unique in combination:

1. Resilience. Maxeon offers a 40 year warranty, but any decent manufacturer will give you 25. What else can you buy today with a 25 year warranty? Not much! These things are designed to survive hail and hurricanes.
2. Freedom. Much like buying a house, buying solar provides a bit of independence from utility rates, which seem to keep going up. Even though you probably won’t go fully off-grid, you could maybe ride through an extended power outage and be there for your neighbors.
3. Democracy. Everyone has access to sunlight, and some parts of the world most in need of democracy have the best solar resource. I like to joke that anyone can have their own solar power plant, but none of us is going to own a nuclear reactor in our backyard. This might not be true anymore, as companies like Aalo aim to build reactors that can “fit in your garage.” Remains to be seen if they’ll sell me one though!
4. Abundance.⁴ We have access to an incredible amount of energy via sunlight. Enough to power our existing economy dozens, if not hundreds, of times over.

Resilience, independence, democracy, and abundance. These are four of the founding principles of the United States, so I think it makes sense that it was invented here, and that it’s making a comeback here too. So instead of trying to go back to the coal mines, let’s invest in PV, it’s the patriotic thing to do! 🇺🇸

This post was adapted from a TEDx talk I gave in 2017 in Jackson, Mississippi.

1. I continue to be puzzled by conservative and rural opposition to wind and solar. I lived on a farm in Oregon when I was a kid and honestly I feel like a solar farm would have fit right in with the grassy fields, wooden fences, and trees dripping with moss. If anyone knows where the opposition comes from, please do share. ↩︎
2. Pearson and Chapin knew each other because they both grew up in Salem and went to Willamette University to study physics. Apparently, Pearson’s father “was a fruit farmer with a fourth-grade education who insisted that Gerald and his two brothers go to college.” ↩︎
3. Reading these stories I’m struck by how fast science happened back then. Today feels so slow in comparison! Maybe that’s why the media still thinks breakthroughs happen in the lab all the time. The reality is that it’s more of a grind. Even the Bell Labs “breakthrough” took decades to really find traction. In 1969 Pearson totaled up sales of his inventions: $154 million in silicon rectifiers, $65 million in p-n-p-n devices, $18 million in thermistors, $20 million in field effect transistors, and $5.8 million in solar cells. 55 years later, in 2024 the world invested over $500B, continuing a sustained annual growth rate of over 20%. ↩︎
4. Everyone’s reading Abundance, right? Read to the end and you’ll learn: for better and for worse, the US is and has always been a place where more is better.  ↩︎