Solar Dreams: a history of solar energy (1878 - 2025)
- Thread starter ScorchedLight
- Start date
-
- Tags
- chile mouchot solar energy
SAE 300 series stainless steel is used for those purposes in the present day. Those are 20th century alloys, but someone in 1885 could start with stainless steel and work to produce an alloy that's of good enough quality. It would have to be replaced often compared to modern alloys, but a purpose-built alloy is feasible according to my cursory research. Higher temperatures ( -75 °C) devices would work fine with more common alloys.
SPOILER: Mouchot's insulation methods are, on the other hand, laughably inadequate. Cryogenic storage will have to wait until James Dewar invents the vacuum flask.
It will start in Chile, and Chile will retain several advantages over other countries. But Chile still lacks key assets that will limit its contributions to this industrial revolution.
However, this third industrial revolution will be far more widespread and involve more countries. From Bolivia to Denmark to Japan, several places that are considered "backwards" or "small" will make an impact on the course of technological and societal development.
I'll probably have to write a three part annex to explain the solar-adjacent developments occuring at the turn of the century.
Can't wait *wink wink*
Seriously, it's great that people are already seeing the advantages solar has over coal. Chile's unique geographic position definitely helps (IIRC it's the country with the highest insolation on Earth)
I'm guessing there'll be a veritable Solar Race by the turn of the century as governments try to break free of the stranglehold that coal and those few nations that control it has over their growth. Breaking free of the coal bottleneck becoming a crying call.
On the other hand the Amish, or preindustrial, work hours of sunrise to sunset might govern factory working hours as well in some nations.
On the other hand the Amish, or preindustrial, work hours of sunrise to sunset might govern factory working hours as well in some nations.
Last edited:
Coal is not that rare. And, like I've said before, solar by itself can't replace a lot of the things coal does; you can't power a locomotive with it, or a ship, or make steel, or use it as a raw material for the chemical industry, all of which were principal usages for coal at this point in time. All this does is replace coal for heating purposes, and while that was an important use of coal, it was very far from being the only or even the most important use. Coal is still going to be very important for many decades into the future.
Also, it's a bit much to be talking about a "third industrial revolution," if only because this point in time is smack-dab in the middle of the actual Second Industrial Revolution and so the development of solar energy and cryogenics would most likely merely be perceived as part of that by future historians rather than a separate event. Especially since a number of the key OTL developments of the Second Industrial Revolution included the invention of better forms of energy generation, storage, and transmission (particularly electricity) and temperature control (refrigeration).
Also, it's a bit much to be talking about a "third industrial revolution," if only because this point in time is smack-dab in the middle of the actual Second Industrial Revolution and so the development of solar energy and cryogenics would most likely merely be perceived as part of that by future historians rather than a separate event. Especially since a number of the key OTL developments of the Second Industrial Revolution included the invention of better forms of energy generation, storage, and transmission (particularly electricity) and temperature control (refrigeration).
Good points about coal, which in turn can be applied to oil. Solar might be cheap and convenient, but it is limited by density, intermittency, and static applications. But for vehicles, it just isn't practical. Nor is it practical for continuous processes, so no Solar Blast Furnances.
Solar energy, just like in OTL isn't a silver bullet.
As to why I'm talking about a "third industrial revolution" just as the second one is ending, there's an in-story explanation and I am planning on dwelling on the historiographical reasoning which separates it from the second one. But giving details would be spoiling it.
Well, it's not even ending...it's usually considered to have run from 1870 to 1914, so we're smack-dab in the middle of it...but if you've come up with an alternate historiography that explains it, that's all good.
Just came across this solar desalinator article from last year: https://news.mit.edu/2020/passive-solar-powered-water-desalination-0207
And the paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ee/c9ee04122b#!divAbstract
A design with multiple stages, to get useful work out of the heat released by condensation, addresses the main problem with solar desalination, and the one in this article is particularly effective using (mostly) what today are cheap materials. I don't know how much efficiency you'd lose by switching to, say, double-layer glass to insulate the face, but as long as you can use a similar, passively wicking multi-stage design that can sit over a pool of brine, built with assembly-line evaporator-condenser panels, you could get good units for arid coastal regions, whether for direct consumer use or large installations.
And the paper: https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2020/ee/c9ee04122b#!divAbstract
A design with multiple stages, to get useful work out of the heat released by condensation, addresses the main problem with solar desalination, and the one in this article is particularly effective using (mostly) what today are cheap materials. I don't know how much efficiency you'd lose by switching to, say, double-layer glass to insulate the face, but as long as you can use a similar, passively wicking multi-stage design that can sit over a pool of brine, built with assembly-line evaporator-condenser panels, you could get good units for arid coastal regions, whether for direct consumer use or large installations.
The main inspiration of this thread is the Las Salinas desalinization plant installed in the Atacama desert, which according to the data provided by the caption produced 3500 liters of fresh water from a salt water source.
Using Blender to extrapolate the area of the plant, it approximates to 1770 M2 (assuming identical size between the two parts, and a height of 1.65 for the man standing to the left as a reference), so this plant could produce roughly 2 L of water per square meter.
One interesting difference between these technologies is that the modern device recycles the heat exchanged in the condensation process, whereas the Las Salinas machine doesn't take advantage from that. This should be the state of the art for the rest of the nascent solar industry, at least until hitting the 20th century. Cheap despite their inefficiency.
An article about early solar cells ... from a time before they knew how they actually worked.
So this device could reach the same efficiency of the first solar cells, about 5%. It was promptly forgotten in OTL in the 1910s, much like Mouchot's work before.
I didn't count on photovoltaics to become relevant until the 1920s at the earliest, but this changes things significantly. By the time Cove makes his discovery, there should be widespread interest in solar energy generation, thus it would gain much more attention.
Cove presented his second solar electric generator there in 1909. This 1.5m2 panel could produce 45 watts of power and was 2.75% efficient in converting solar energy into electricity. By mid-1909, Cove had moved to New York City, where he presented his third prototype, a solar array consisting of four solar panels of 60 watt-peak each, which charged a total of five lead-acid batteries. The total surface area was 4.5 m2, the maximum power output was 240 watts, and efficiency rose to 5% – similar to the first solar panel presented by Bell Labs. [18]
So this device could reach the same efficiency of the first solar cells, about 5%. It was promptly forgotten in OTL in the 1910s, much like Mouchot's work before.
I didn't count on photovoltaics to become relevant until the 1920s at the earliest, but this changes things significantly. By the time Cove makes his discovery, there should be widespread interest in solar energy generation, thus it would gain much more attention.
Is Einstein's patent career going to be affected by all the new inventions? Will he be too busy to write his Wunderjahr papers?
It would, but it would be very tough to turn into something useful without a ton of further experimentation and development, especially since unlike OTL (where satellites came along at just the right time to justify developing solar cells no matter how expensive they were) there aren't a lot of great applications for them (they're surely going to be far more expensive than other means of generating electricity, just like early solar cells IOTL, if for no other reason than that the technology hasn't been developed to produce them reliably and with a high yield). Probably there will be a lot of academic and small-scale experimentation with them, but I wouldn't expect this to become economically viable except possibly for very specialized applications for several decades while physicists and chemists elucidate the underlying theory of semiconductors and experimenters figure out better and more cost-effective ways of building them. This is likely to advance the general semiconductor industry as well and perhaps result in an earlier transistor, since a lot of the necessary technologies overlap.
Overall, I think it will look kind of like cathode rays or radioactivity--they were intensely interesting to a lot of scientists the moment they were discovered, and there was a huge amount of experimentation with both, but it took decades for practical applications to be developed (less so in the case of radioactivity, c.f. radium watch dials, but the big applications still took a long time). It took about 25-30 years before the first cathode-ray tubes were developed into vacuum tubes and x-ray generators, for instance. In this case, too, PV is chasing a moving target as other energy sources become cheaper. I don't think that they'll accomplish much in the way of widespread usage before the 1940s or 1950s, and perhaps not until later. Still earlier than IOTL, but there's a lot of hurdles that PVs have to leap and things that have to be done before they're really competitive with other generation forms in general use (but again, in more specialized applications where other generation forms have issues they're much more practical)
I agree. As with all the technologies in development in this timeline, there's a gulf between discovery and widespread adoption. Cove and Fritts' photovoltaic experiments might receive more attention than in OTL, but at the same time they will be competing against concentrated solar power - which would be easier to understand, more mature, and probably more economical.
However, I can see some immediate uses for this technology.
The first and most obvious one is fullfilling the same needs that early solar cell did: a simple and reliable energy source that can be left unattended for a long time (and whose interrumption isn't a great loss). Things like radio beacons for an early TACAN system might benefit from this. It is also more portable than solar concentrators, and produces electrical power without intermediaries, which might be useful for explorers, colonists and some military applications.
The second one is a bit of a spoiler, though.
Yes, this is the main "highly specialized application" I was referring to. It's worth noting that early solar cells were still too expensive to be used even in some elements of this application--AT&T was interested in using them for powering system components in remote rural areas, but found that they were too expensive compared to, IIRC, using batteries and sending people around to replace them every so often, at least at the time.
One thing that might be a bit different about this timeline is that concentrating solar cells might be more popular, especially combined with thermovoltaics or other forms of extracting heat energy. Given that concentrating solar is already fairly widespread, it is not so great a leap for people to experiment with combining photovoltaic cells with it, probably mainly to try to produce a system that needs less maintenance ("no moving parts," at least on the hot side). At first this would be pretty useless (it would be more efficient than a regular cell but still less so than a conventional CSP generator), but it might lead to some divergences in the longer run; you might see greater use of concentrating solar cells in production plants, perhaps as retrofits to existing concentrating solar plants.
A second divergence might come in cell chemistry. There are a number of toxic cell chemistries (like the perovskites) that have issues IOTL because it's considered critical to avoid leaching into the environment. This would probably not be considered as big of an issue ITTL because, well, it's just too early for people to care all that much about environmental lead and other heavy metals. There are still serious degradation issues to overcome, many processing steps in the modern day use technology that was less practical at the time, and I'm not sure if the chemistry was well enough understood for it to be even plausible until much later, but it's possible that they could adopt alternative chemistries because they're easier to produce than silicon and end up accidentally producing a lot of toxic waste (as depressing as that thought is).
He is still a kid at this point, so a lot of things can diverge at this point. However, I don't think that his scientific proclivities should change in this timeline, and thus he would still become a physicist.
The early electric car had advantages over the IC car, but the battery technology wasn't able to keep up with fuel-based systems. It would take a major fluke to keep cars electric, even considering the added pressure to develop better electrical batteries in this timeline.
Prioritizing technological advancement and convencience over the environment is something that this TL will share with OTL. While it will have positive effects on the world, earlier renewables are pushed out of relatively petty interests and not ecological concerns. Developing technologies that help with intermittence will take priority over unquantified environmental damage, at least until the problem becomes serious enough to warrant attention.
Part 15: The struggle
Almonte, Tarapacá
February, 1888
Constantino Serrano limped as fast as he could, trying to regain control of what was - in his mind at least - complete chaos. He cursed Alejandro Puig and his borderline syndicalist ideas (and the fact that he and Dr. Mouchot had departed to France in search for talented engineers made him fume) for what was happening: the workers sitting quietly in their workplaces, firmly not working but otherwise calm. They were adhering to the General Strike summoned by the nitrate workers... but the workers were just as confused as Constantino. The Worker's Union simply didn't understand how to adhere to a strike in which other workers demanded what they took for granted: to be paid in coin, freedom of commerce, safety gear, ten hour shifts, a guaranteed clean beds in the company's housing or a stipend for rent outside, and food of decent quality. The conditions weren't luxurious by any means - barely a step above what a soldier would find in its barracks - but it allowed each worker to produce more and more consistently than the brutish regime that went on the Saltpeter pampas.
But worker solidarity was stronger than any loyalty to the company, and so they sat peacefully.
Constantino wasn't worried about lost revenue or damage to the company's property. They had had strikes before, and they would have them again. But not having any personnel available in the eve of a Government visit was, in his view, very inconvenient. He and the Union leader, a former Army Private, discussed for too long for an exception to the strike, to provide catering to the government comitive for a few hours. The negotiated deal was outrageous, but he could afford it.
And so, the arrival of Eusebio Lillo, Interior Minister for President Balmaceda, went with relatively minor difficulties. A few hothead workers shouted at him, but were quickly taken away by their fellows with more sense. Constantino had bought himself a few hours of normalcy in the evening.
Eusebio Lillo looked perplexed, before realizing what he had implied.
"Damn you Alejandro, you're about to start a war!" Constantino thought.
Grenoble, France
March, 1888
Alejandro saw as Mouchot's eyes started to look inwards. Whenever Mouchot needed to think, he reverted to that absent stare for a fee seconds before returning to normal.
Although it is easy to simplify the dawn of solar energy generation as a pump of inventions and ideas emerging from a vaccuum, this period cannot be fully understood without the human stories that took place in it. It was, first and foremost, a time of struggle: Workers against Capitalists, Progressives versus Conservatives, Empires against Republics, Business against the State. Alejandro Puig played a crucial - albeit unknowing- part in the first one. He was a man who despised exploitation in all its forms, someone who never stopped identified with the working mass from which he emerged. The conditions he demanded for the workers were initially resisted by his colleagues, but he shortcutted them by pocketing the expenses from his own wage in the company. And, as it turned out, his desire to provide decent conditions became one of the key assets during the early years of the company. Workers were more productive, had lower absentee and resignation rates, and provided a better return on investment that their peers in Nitrate extraction sites.
As news about the conditions that the Franco-Chilena provided spread through the province, workers became aware about their own squalid existence. This awareness brought resentment and, inevitably, anger against the owners who extracted every drop of labour of their workers before disposing of them. The General Strike of 1888 was the culmination of that anger, an anger that was cleverly manipulated by sincere strikers and opportunists alike. The Chilean Navy was defanged, and the Army was unwilling to cause a similar incident like the one that ended in the "coastal occupation" of Chile's ports. The Royal Navy also made its presence known, but the sight of a few hundred British citizens in the mass, along dozens of Germans, French and American strikers made them cautious. The Chilean Government, knowing the situation to be a potential powderkeg, urged Saltpeter companies to negotiate with the workers, but otherwise didn't support either side.
February, 1888
Constantino Serrano limped as fast as he could, trying to regain control of what was - in his mind at least - complete chaos. He cursed Alejandro Puig and his borderline syndicalist ideas (and the fact that he and Dr. Mouchot had departed to France in search for talented engineers made him fume) for what was happening: the workers sitting quietly in their workplaces, firmly not working but otherwise calm. They were adhering to the General Strike summoned by the nitrate workers... but the workers were just as confused as Constantino. The Worker's Union simply didn't understand how to adhere to a strike in which other workers demanded what they took for granted: to be paid in coin, freedom of commerce, safety gear, ten hour shifts, a guaranteed clean beds in the company's housing or a stipend for rent outside, and food of decent quality. The conditions weren't luxurious by any means - barely a step above what a soldier would find in its barracks - but it allowed each worker to produce more and more consistently than the brutish regime that went on the Saltpeter pampas.
But worker solidarity was stronger than any loyalty to the company, and so they sat peacefully.
Constantino wasn't worried about lost revenue or damage to the company's property. They had had strikes before, and they would have them again. But not having any personnel available in the eve of a Government visit was, in his view, very inconvenient. He and the Union leader, a former Army Private, discussed for too long for an exception to the strike, to provide catering to the government comitive for a few hours. The negotiated deal was outrageous, but he could afford it.
And so, the arrival of Eusebio Lillo, Interior Minister for President Balmaceda, went with relatively minor difficulties. A few hothead workers shouted at him, but were quickly taken away by their fellows with more sense. Constantino had bought himself a few hours of normalcy in the evening.
- Mister Minister, I hope your trip was pleasant. We are honoured to have you here. - Constantino greeted, as they sat on a table placed in front of the assembly yard.
- Thank you, although I regret to tell you that this whole trip hasn't been a pleasant experience at all. Congress is sharpening its knives against Balmaceda, ready to throw the President at the wolves if anything goes wrong like it did five years ago. The Royal Navy has placed ships in Antofagasta and Iquique, to "monitor" the movements of the Army. And the strikers have taken advantage of that. The city's effectively under their control.
- That's a shame. And to happen just as the English were preparing to leave.
- A shame, yes. And one that's partially your fault. - Lillo said, matter-of-factly.
- What? How can I be responsible for a general strike? We have good relations with our workforce, we haven't given them any reason to protest, let alone set a province-wide strike.
- That's precisely the reason why: the Franco-Chilena has proved that a company can be profitable despite treating people like, well... people. And the nitrate workers want that same treatment.
- Well, the success of our business is based on our workers. They have become skilled labourers and are compensated as such. Providing them with adequate shelter and wages isn't done out of charity, but out of business necessity: our workers produce more that way.
- I am aware of this. In more civilized parts of the world, your policies wouldn't even be notable. But, alas, Chile has been a country of levies since we conquered this land. Workers are as repleacable as the tools they operate.
- Am I to understand that my company's policies should change?
Eusebio Lillo looked perplexed, before realizing what he had implied.
- Oh, no. Not at all. That wasn't what I was implying at all, and I apologize if it came out that way. The Franco-Chilena has found a way to do business that it suits itself, and it is not the Government's role to intervene. I was just providing context of the wider visit. You'll understand that this meeting was a visit of opportunity as we wait for an answer between the parts.
- And how are the negotiations going? - asked Constantino
- Well, it isn't looking good for the producers of Nitrate. The workers have realized just how unfairly they've been treated and are demanding changes.
- And what does La Moneda think?
- President Balmaceda is only concerned with the continuation of order, and the prevention of another TSC-style incident. The situation is been closely monitored by the European powers, who have their own stake on it.
"Damn you Alejandro, you're about to start a war!" Constantino thought.
- And how does this relate to our company? - Constantino asked, trying to bring the conversation back to his depth.
- Well, it doesn't. Not directly at least. With our rights over nitrate now a legal fiction, the Chilean State is deep in debt and in need of another source of income. We think we've found one in the form of copper and other minerals, but those would require much more infrastructure and, of course, energy. - Eusebio Lillo said. - And we've heard that a certain frenchman has figured out a way to turn sunlight into energy, for free... the Franco Chilena has been experimenting on melting metals with sunlight, right?
- Yes, our devices can reach those temperatures. The devices are experimental at this stage, though. They are far from the polished heaters we sell to the public.
- Could it be scaled? Ramping up the power output to melt several tons per day?
- Yes. As long as the sun shines, of course.
- Very well. - Eusebio Lillo said, indicating that the conversation was coming to an end. - We will need an official report about the capacities, limits and costs of these devices. If, if, these devices can reach the desired output, we might set things right this time. I hope you understand the responsibility that brings.
- Indeed, I do.
Grenoble, France
March, 1888
- That irresponsible fool! Did he realize that he was vastly overselling the capacities of our machines? We can't reach a tenth of the capacity he claimed, to the Government no less! - Mouchot was fuming as he read the copy of the letter Constantino sent to Eusebio Lillo, which detailed the calculations used to justify the factibility of the project. - Worse still, the calculations are wrong by a factor of three! Does he really think we can build a 75-meter diameter solar concentrator in the middle of the desert?! And how are we going to move it, callibrate it and do the suntracking?
- Constantino is not a stupid man, Docteur. He might not be as knowledgeable as you, but he is a sensible and cautious man. - Alejandro Puig answered.
- But I am the expert in this subject, and I can tell you right now that such structure would easily surpass the first level of that eyesore Eiffel is building in Paris. Where are we going to find so much material? How are we going to fund it?
- Augustin, - Alejandro rarely used his first name.- you of all people should know the advances we've made since our collaboration started. The unexpected directions of research, the unrelated discoveries, and the new techniques we've developed. Maybe Constantino was overconfident, but I am sure his reasoning is sound. If anything, this makes our current task all the more important. Let us think things through before becoming enraged.
Alejandro saw as Mouchot's eyes started to look inwards. Whenever Mouchot needed to think, he reverted to that absent stare for a fee seconds before returning to normal.
- Very well. We'll cross that bridge when we arrive there. For now, we should add one or two structural engineers to our list. Let's go back to work.
Although it is easy to simplify the dawn of solar energy generation as a pump of inventions and ideas emerging from a vaccuum, this period cannot be fully understood without the human stories that took place in it. It was, first and foremost, a time of struggle: Workers against Capitalists, Progressives versus Conservatives, Empires against Republics, Business against the State. Alejandro Puig played a crucial - albeit unknowing- part in the first one. He was a man who despised exploitation in all its forms, someone who never stopped identified with the working mass from which he emerged. The conditions he demanded for the workers were initially resisted by his colleagues, but he shortcutted them by pocketing the expenses from his own wage in the company. And, as it turned out, his desire to provide decent conditions became one of the key assets during the early years of the company. Workers were more productive, had lower absentee and resignation rates, and provided a better return on investment that their peers in Nitrate extraction sites.
As news about the conditions that the Franco-Chilena provided spread through the province, workers became aware about their own squalid existence. This awareness brought resentment and, inevitably, anger against the owners who extracted every drop of labour of their workers before disposing of them. The General Strike of 1888 was the culmination of that anger, an anger that was cleverly manipulated by sincere strikers and opportunists alike. The Chilean Navy was defanged, and the Army was unwilling to cause a similar incident like the one that ended in the "coastal occupation" of Chile's ports. The Royal Navy also made its presence known, but the sight of a few hundred British citizens in the mass, along dozens of Germans, French and American strikers made them cautious. The Chilean Government, knowing the situation to be a potential powderkeg, urged Saltpeter companies to negotiate with the workers, but otherwise didn't support either side.