Guide to Solar Powered Products

Products using free energy from the sun

Solar energy is energy from the sun and predominately responsible for the class of resources collectively known as renewable energy.

Solar energy also broadly describes technologies that utilise sunlight. Modern solar technologies harness the sun to provide water heating, daylighting and even flight.

Solar power generally describes technologies that convert sunlight into electricity and in some cases thermal or mechanical power. In 1866, the French engineer Auguste Mouchout successfully powered a steam engine with sunlight. This is the first known example of a solar powered mechanical device and over the next 50 years inventors developed solar powered devices for irrigation, refrigeration and locomotion. The progeny of these early developments are concentrating solar power plants.

The modern age of solar power arrived in 1954 when researchers at Bell Laboratories developed a photovoltaic cell capable of effectively converting light into electricity. This breakthrough marked a fundamental change in how power is generated.

The utilisation of solar energy and solar power spans from traditional technologies that provide food, heat and light to electricity which is uniquely modern. The diversity of form and long history of solar energy are manifest in a wide variety of applications.