Solar Panels: A flashlight-powered windmill and electrifying the world’s most remote villages
Play • 28 min

In just one hour, the earth catches enough solar energy to power the world for a year. Big solar farms, home installations and increasingly efficient solar cells are slowly, but surely, converting more and more of the sun’s energy into electricity every year. And some of the poorest people, living in the most remote villages have helped usher in this new era of solar power.

In this episode, you'll hear how Calvin Fuller’s difficult childhood and adolescent interest in explosives catalyzed the invention of the first silicon solar cell. Then Bob Freling explains how witnessing the installation of a solar panel in a remote Chinese village changed his life forever.

In 1954, Calvin Fuller and a team at Bell Labs, built a solar cell that could convert 6% of the sun’s energy into electricity. The technology’s potential captured imaginations and even helped power the first satellites launched into space. But applications here on earth proved harder to find.

But Bob Freling found a terrestrial application that’s making an outsized impact. Bob, working with the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), has helped more than 1-million people around the  world who can’t access the electrical grid use solar to do a lot more than turn on the lights. His story takes us to the African country of Benin where local farmers are using solar power to fight drought and increase food security.

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