FİRST PHOTOVOLTAİC DEVİCES

Photovoltaics is the process of converting sunlight directly into electricity using solar cells. Today it is a rapidly growing and increasingly important renewable alternative to conventional fossil fuel electricity generation, but compared to other electricity generating technologies, it is a relative newcomer, with the first practical photovoltaic devices demonstrated in the 1950s. Research and development of photovoltaics received its first “grid” power for satellite applications. These space solar cells were several thousand times more expensive than they are today and the perceived need for an electricity generation method apart from grid power was still a decade away, but solar cells became an interesting scientific variation to the rapidly expanding silicon transistor development with several potentially specialized niche markets. It took the oil crisis in the 1970s to focus world attention on the desirability of alternate energy sources for terrestrial use, which in turn promoted the investigation of photovoltaics as a means of generating terrestrial power Although the oil crisis proved short -lived and the financial incentive to develop solar cells abated, solar cells had entered the arena as a power generating technology