The world’s first wind farm stood on the north side of Crotched Mountain in southern New Hampshire, on land owned by the Crotched Mountain Rehabilitation Center, a hospital and school that serves individuals with disabilities and their families. It consisted of 20 30kW turbines – quite small by standards of the 2020s.
U.S. Windpower installs the world’s first wind farm in New Hampshire Read more
The first solar cell factories were located in Ningbo and Kaifeng. Annual national solar capacity installations were still low, as only 0.5 kW of photovoltaic capacity was installed. This increased to 8 kW in 1980, 70 kW in 1985, 500 kW in 1990, and 1550 kW in 1995. Soon, China would become the world’s undisputed leader in solar energy production.
China begins producing solar energy cells for first time Read more
The team that achieved it was led by a British scientist named James Tuck. After the success of Scylla-1, Los Alamos went on to build multiple pinch machines over the next few years.
Many argue that this event marks the true invention of PV technology because it was the first instance of a solar technology that could actually power an electric device for several hours of a day.
Frank Shuman was an American inventor, engineer, and solar energy pioneer known for his work on solar engines. Shuman built the world’s first solar thermal power station in Maadi, Egypt in 1913, using used semi circle shaped troughs to power a 60-70 horsepower engine that pumped 6,000 gallons of water per minute from the Nile River to adjacent cotton fields.
Frank Shuman builds the world’s first solar thermal power plant in Egypt Read more
Blyth’s 10 m high, cloth-sailed wind turbine was installed in the garden of his holiday cottage at Marykirk in Kincardineshire and was used to charge accumulators developed by the Frenchman Camille Alphonse Faure, to power the lighting in the cottage, thus making it the first house in the world to have its electricity supplied by wind power. Blyth offered the surplus electricity to the people of Marykirk for lighting the main street, however, they turned down the offer as they thought electricity was “the work of the devil.”
Though his solar panels were very inefficient and thus not economically-viable for most uses, they were a critical early step in the development of renewable energy technology.
American inventor Charles Fritts created the first commercial solar panel Read more
The voltaic pile became one of the first reliable sources of electricity, and that new source of study enabled many discoveries in the field, from the understanding of the electrolysis of water to the research of electric arcs.
Alessandro Volta invents the voltaic pile, the world’s first battery Read more
