“Intelligence is the ability of a species to live in harmony with its environment.” This is one of our favorite quotes here at EcoWatch, coming from the environmentalist Paul Watson.1
Learning to work with solar energy, the most abundant natural resource on Earth, serves as the perfect example of living in harmony with one’s surroundings. You don’t need to look any further than the leaves on a tree to see this at work.
Bạn đang xem: A Brief History of Solar Energy
When most of us think of solar energy, the first thing that comes to mind is modern solar panels. Over the last few decades, photovoltaic technology has improved exponentially in cost, efficiency and scale, nearing a point of ubiquity in the world’s energy ecosystems. For that reason, it may be tempting for us to think of solar panels as the past, present and future of harnessing solar energy.
However, humans have utilized solar energy for millennia in a number of creative ways prior to the development of the modern solar panel. And to unlock new ideas and insights into how to best work with our environments in the future, we often have to challenge what we consider certainties of the ways that we generate our energy.
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A look into history is often the best place to start.
How Was Solar Energy First Used? (Up to 1800s)
Thousands of years before we had electricity, humans learned to use solar energy in a handful of different ways. In addition to lighting, early civilizations used sunlight to regulate the temperatures of buildings and cities. That practice is now commonly known as solar passive heating — an approach to heating and cooling homes through simple devices and architectural design.2
Solar passive heating was so common that entire Greek cities were designed in a way that allowed every home access to sunlight for warmth in the winter. Evidence shows that civilizations in Egypt, the Americas, China and Rome (and surely other areas) all employed various types of passive solar heating or cooling techniques as well.3 4
Here are a few of the most notable examples:
- Roman bathhouses with south-facing windows could collect solar energy to heat water.5
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- Roman greenhouses would use glass to concentrate solar energy.
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- Ancient Egyptians would use sunlight to evaporate water, creating a cooling effect in their homes.6
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- The Anasazi built entire cities beneath south-facing cliffs to ward off heat in the summer when the sun was at its peak, yet still receive sunlight during winter when the sun was lowest in its arc.
Thousands of years before we had electricity, humans learned to use solar energy in a handful of different ways. In addition to lighting, early civilizations used sunlight to regulate the temperatures of buildings and cities. That practice is now commonly known as solar passive heating — an approach to heating and cooling homes through simple devices and architectural design.2
Solar passive heating was so common that entire Greek cities were designed in a way that allowed every home access to sunlight for warmth in the winter. Evidence shows that civilizations in Egypt, the Americas, China and Rome (and surely other areas) all employed various types of passive solar heating or cooling techniques as well.3 4
Here are a few of the most notable examples:
- Roman bathhouses with south-facing windows could collect solar energy to heat water.5
-
- Roman greenhouses would use glass to concentrate solar energy.
-
- Ancient Egyptians would use sunlight to evaporate water, creating a cooling effect in their homes.6
-
- The Anasazi built entire cities beneath south-facing cliffs to ward off heat in the summer when the sun was at its peak, yet still receive sunlight during winter when the sun was lowest in its arc.
However, it wasn’t until the mid-to-late 1800s that what we now consider solar power came to be.
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