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New flexible solar panels called nantennas can collect up to 90% of available light, compared to traditional panels that only collect about 20%. Solar energy usage has increased significantly, and the Earth absorbs 3,850,000 exajoules of solar energy each year. The first solar-powered home was built in 1939.
Most solar panels collect only about a fifth of the available light, largely due to inefficient electrical circuits, their materials, and their rigidity. New flexible prototypes, called nantennas, can collect up to 90% of available light, including light from wavelengths that are not currently exploited.
Learn more about solar energy:
The amount of solar energy in use increased more than 150-fold from 1985 to 2007, from about 20 megawatts to nearly 3,000 megawatts.
Approximately 3,850,000 exajoules – one exajoule is 1018 joules – of solar energy is absorbed by the Earth each year. To put that into perspective, the US only uses about 95 exajoules of energy total per year.
One of the first solar-powered homes was Solar I, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939. While not totally dependent on solar panels, the house was heated in the winter by solar energy and sometimes used solar panels for air conditioning and power.
