34 Years of Experience with Solar Power

This past Friday, Edward Kern, a Thayer School of Engineering alumnus, gave a presentation on renewable energy technology, drawing on 34 years of experience in the field.

Concern for the environment drove solar power advancement in the 60’s, 70’s, and 00’s. Alternative energy was also an important consideration in the 70’s and 00’s. Recently, the largest incentive is economic.

Kern explained that, up until about fifty years ago, we were able to take water from one place, use it, and then dump it somewhere else. Water was free. We could cut down a tree and burn it for heat. That, too, was free. Fortunately, air is still free, but, according to Kern, we could be “at the cusp of where that is about to change.”

As part of a team that pushed for rooftop solar panels as a way to generate energy, Kern explained that a lot of technological advancement requires one to “be there at the right time.” Luckily for Kern and his team, the chance he had been waiting for arose in the early 1980’s when the funds for a cancelled government project were rediverted to Kern’s lab.

The team used this funding to support a project in which solar panels were installed on five houses in a small neighborhood in Gardner, Massachusetts. The results proved to electric companies that it was safe to connect solar panels to power grids.

Today, there are many small–scale applications for solar panels. For example, in Amherst, Massachusetts there was a demand for independently powered street lights in remote parking lots that Kern met by installing a system that would allow for solar energy to be harvested during the day to be used at night.

Kern also detailed a small island on which a solar powered camera was set up to watch over the nest of an eagle as the eggs hatched. This island is located about 100 miles south in the Connecticut River.

Many large–scale applications for solar energy also exist for which Spain is one of the leading developers.

Kern continues his work today and has recently developed technology to gauge the amount of sunlight that a particular area receives. These devices have many uses in different parts of the world; for example, some organizations use these devices to price land based on their potential for generating solar energy.

When asked his opinion of the future of solar power in the US is, Kern said, “It’s all in politics.