Photovoltaics (PV), the solar power, which was nothing a few years ago, is the world leader in clean and sustainable energy today. It has become low-cost and affordable for everybody: Millions of people have already invested in it. This book reports on the euphoria resulting from solar PV that started about half a century ago in the United States, followed by Japan. By the turn of the century was triggered the first PV market explosion in Germany, followed by the great financial and industrial turmoil ending up with China’s leadership. Today, the solar euphoria has embraced the whole world, with hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in millions of PV plants on buildings or on the ground. The book is a guide to investing while helping to save the environment. It tells everything about solar power.
SOLAR POWER TODAY
1. An Introduction to PV, to the Expert, the Non-Expert, for Education, for the Potential Investor
2. PV Markets in the World Today, 2022, A TW Installed
3. Climate Change and PV
4. Global Energy Transformation. A World of PV?
REVIEW OF A FASCINATING PV EXPANSION IN THE 20TH CENTURY
5. PV’s Scientific Beginnings since Becquerel in Paris
6. 1954: Start-Up of PV’s Industrial Development
7. US Pioneers Had a Dream
8. PV Front Runners in Europe
9. The Later Years of the 20th Century: Big Oil, Japan, Africa, and the Developing Countries
10. PV Expert Meetings around the World, Political Monster Meetings in Support of the Renewables, New Energy Organisations
THE BIG BANG IN THE YEAR 2000
11. New Political Regulations in Germany, New PV Industry in China
12. 2012, PV’s Year of Industrial and Social Disaster, Germany Giving Up Its Leadership
13. PV Markets up to Now: A Summary
14. Green Hydrogen, the Follow-Up of Solar, Wind, and Hydro Power
Biography
Wolfgang Palz is a German physicist. For more than half a century, he has been a global leader of the development of solar energy and other renewables. As an official of the European Commission in Brussels, he was the manager of PV development in Europe for 20 years. From 2000 to 2002, he was a member of an "Enquête Commission" of the German Parliament on the German energy perspective on the horizon 2050. Later, he was a consultant for the EU Commission on PV programmes for the underprivileged in Latin America. Dr Palz has received numerous awards, including the International Solar Energy Society (ISES) Global Leadership Award in Advancing Solar Energy Policy (2011). He is a bearer of an Order of Merit of the German Republic.
