From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity (review)

From Space to Earth: The Story of Solar Electricity. By John Perlin. Ann Arbor, Mich.: AATEC, 1999. Pp. xvi+224. $32.

Historians will continue to wait for a professional history of solar power—one that places that technology in the context of its times; assesses its meaning for engineering, politics, and international development; and presents compelling, complete accounts of why key actors made the decisions they did. In the meantime, however, John Perlin's volume keeps the ball in play. Perlin offers a wealth of interview-based information and a marvelous array of pictorial material. Most notably, he correctly perceives that photovoltaic technology—"PV"—has succeeded as an industrial product that generates onsite power in small quantities, rather than (as originally envisioned by some promoters) as a direct substitute for large, central-station power plants.

First, the big positive. Many early solar entrepreneurs conceived of their product as a long-term substitute for coal, oil, and uranium, with obvious benefits for the environment. However, business success for PV came not from elbowing aside these traditional fuels in utility power plants but by meeting the modest niche power needs of diverse industries. Perlin fully grasps this distinction, and he tells the story of PV in terms of progress through industrial markets that were characterized by remote locations requiring small but reliable quantities of electricity.

The first and most remote of these, of course, was space, where solar panels powered communications and other devices on satellites starting in the late 1950s. The premium that spaceflight placed on low weight, even at the expense of high price, left early PV optimized for the wrong variable to succeed on earth. In coming years, though, PV firms hopped from one niche market to the next: Coast Guard buoys, cathodic protection for oil pipelines, telecommunication repeaters, railway signals and caboose lights, pumps in African villages. That Perlin's chapters correspond to these individual, application-based markets indicates his understanding of the dynamic that has moved solar power in the last fifty years.

Perlin also strikes a blow against a pervasive myth of solar power. Over the years, suspicious observers have charged that major oil companies sought to squelch the solar industry. In contrast, Perlin notes that the oil industry provided two critical markets that sustained early solar firms: navigation lights for offshore drilling platforms and cathodic protection for pipelines. Oil companies also made investments in solar that, while small to them, directed vital resources to the infant industry. In the end, Perlin endorses the perspective of solar executive Charlie Gay: "You don't spend hundreds of millions of dollars in research and development as the oil companies have to destroy an industry" (p. 66).

On the other side of the balance, From Space to Earth is an enthusiast's book. Perlin has a great ear for a story, and his interviews turned up some dillies. Consider Nathan "Available" Jones, who fielded a random call at his Houston garage from an Exxon executive looking for someone to install navigation lights on that company's deep-sea rigs. Jones smelled an opportunity and immediately flew east to corner the market in navigation lights—a growing market soon captured by solar power. That being said, Perlin seems more interested in recounting the stories than in verifying and nailing down their details, ascertaining their significance, or evaluating his interviewees' conceptual framework. For instance, it is interesting to hear Gay's perspective, quoted above, on the stance of oil firms toward solar. However, readers might wish that Perlin had tabulated those investments and assessed the effect of oil money and management on the solar sector, instead of letting the pithy quote end the discussion.

Along the same lines, Perlin's apparent lack of interest in deeper analysis sometimes leads him astray. For example, he misses the nub when he tells us that falling oil prices killed Luz International, an innovative solar thermal company. In fact, Luz's investors...