Background
Every day, the sun radiates down onto the earth a thousand times more energy than we could ever use. The demand for technologies capable of tapping into that energy is booming as pressure mounts to find solutions to finite resources, climate change and sustainable development. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems – which convert energy from the sun into electricity – produce no greenhouse gases, have no moving parts, require virtually no maintenance and have cells that last for decades. PV systems are not new. The science behind them was discovered in 1839 and advancements were made with the development of solar cells and the dawn of the space age in the 1950s, but high production costs translated into a small market for commercial applications. It was not until the development of grid-connected PV systems in the 1990s that the industry finally started to take off. Since 2002, it has become the world’s fastest growing energy technology, with global PV production increasing by an average of 48 percent per year.