Value Proposition
Human beings have harnessed the power of the sun since ancient times. On nearly every continent, early peoples constructed shelters to maximize the sun’s warmth. The Romans, the Greeks, the Anasazi, the Chinese, and the Pueblo all designed private and public structures that took advantage of the sun’s heat and light.
Though using the sun to generate electricity is a far more recent advance, it too dates back all the way to 1839, when 19-year-old French experimental physicist, Edmund Becquerel discovered that when sunlight struck certain metals, they sparked. Through the remainder of the 19th century, several important discoveries were made, including the creation of the first primitive solar cell made of selenium. These cells had efficiencies of 1-2%.
In 1905, Albert Einstein explained the photoelectric effect—that light can generate electricity as Becquerel had discovered. But it was not until 1953 that the truly modern solar cell came into being when Gerald Pearson of Bell Laboratories created a silicon solar cell that was far more efficient than any selenium solar cells. Together with colleagues Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller, Pearson helped create cells that could achieve efficiencies of 4%. This was enough to power some basic equipment and quickly became used in radios and toys.
Though solar cells saw use in spaceships and satellites, it wasn’t until the early 1970’s that their cost came down enough to make wide-scale electricity generation feasible. Since then the price of solar panels has fallen from more than $100 per Watt to $1 per Watt today in certain thin film panels. This is thanks in part to new manufacturing techniques and in part to solar panel efficiencies which have reached over 40% in some laboratories, with the average commercial panel achieving efficiencies between 12-16%.
In the early years of the new century, with solar incentive programs in dozens of countries and states, Just Energy is proud to be the standard-bearer of the solar cause in modern times. Solar energy has long been good for the planet. Just Energy makes it good for business, too.
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