History of Solar power

Thermosolar: such a story...

Fascination for the Sun power

It is interesting to look back and see how the Sun has been often used for its power in the past. We could for instance imagine that Archimedes is the father of Concentrated Solar Power. Indeed during the Battle of Syracuse (Italy, 213 - 221 B.C.) angle hexagonal mirrors were used to destroy the Roman fleet.

Leonardo da Vinci also thought of using the Sun. He designed Solar Concentrator in 1515 already to use solar power.

Industrial applications of the Sun

In 1747 in Paris Buffon tested to put together 168 mobile mirrors (20cm x 20xm). They were all mobile to better orientate the light.

Lavoisier developped the first sun oven: he concentrated sun power with liquid lenses and reached 1.800° Celcius.

Augustin Mouchot then invented concentrated solar captors and developped several tracking systems. In 1868 he published "La Chaleur Solaire et les applications industrielles" which deals with the solar power and its industrial applications.

Sun powered engines

The work around concentrated solar power - or thermosolar or solar power - has been intensified with ambitious project. John Ericsson (USA) in 1868 designed a Solar engine. He wrote:
"The time will come when Europe must stop her mills and factories for want of coal. Upper Egypt then, with her never-ceasing sun power, will invite the European manufacturer to move his machinery and erect his mills on the firm ground along the sides of the alluvial plain of the Nile, where sufficient power can be otbainted to enable him to run more spindles than a hundred Manchesters." -John Ericsson, Mechanic and Builder, July, 1887.

This wish of finding a way to capture solar power and turn it into something valuable for the new industrial world was also the goal of Aubrey Eneas in 1901 (USA). He created a Solar motor to irrigate 120h with 6.400 liter of water / minute. The output cas equivalent to 5 kW!

In 1900 in Portugal Padre Himalaya designed Pireliosforo. Thousands of mirrors over a surface of 80m² reaching 3.500° Celcius have been presented at the Exposition of Saint-Louis in 1904.

Solard fields for world energy consumption

The beginning of the 20th century saw the first solar fields. Schuman in Tacony (US, 1911) created a Solar plant with 20 kW of total output!. His next solar plant in Maadi (Egypt, 1912) was designed in 5 rows of 62 m of parabolic mirrors for a total output of 88 kW!
Frank Schumancreated then the Sun Power Co and his dream was to build in the Sahara 52.600 km² of mirror collectors to produce 198 MW which were equivalent to the world energy consumption in 1909.

Solar Energy Generating Systems

In the 80s Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) was created. It is the largest solar energy generating facility in the world with different solar fields.