Richard Swanson (born 1945) is an American electrical engineer and businessman, retired founder of SunPower, a solar photovoltaic cell manufacturer.
Swanson was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1945. [1]
He graduated in 1969 with Bachelor of Engineering and Master of Engineering degrees from Ohio State University and, in 1975, received a Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering from Stanford University. [1] He then joined the university faculty at Stanford and began research in solar cell technology. [2] [3] In 1985 Swanson received grants for his solar energy research from the Electric Power Research Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy. [4] That same year he founded SunPower Corporation. [4] Swanson is credited for creating Swanson's law, an observation that solar cell prices decline by 20% for every doubling of solar panel industry capacity. [5] The law is often compared to the better known Moore's Law. [5]
In 2002, Richard was awarded the William R. Cherry award by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). [1] Additionally, Swanson received the Becquerel Prize in Photovoltaics from the European Communities in 2006. [1] He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2008 and has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 2009. [1]
Distributed generation, also distributed energy, on-site generation (OSG), or district/decentralized energy, is electrical generation and storage performed by a variety of small, grid-connected or distribution system-connected devices referred to as distributed energy resources (DER).
Eli Yablonovitch is an American physicist and engineer who, along with Sajeev John, founded the field of photonic crystals in 1987. He and his team were the first to create a 3-dimensional structure that exhibited a full photonic bandgap, which has been named Yablonovite. In addition to pioneering photonic crystals, he was the first to recognize that a strained quantum-well laser has a significantly reduced threshold current compared to its unstrained counterpart. This is now employed in the majority of semiconductor lasers fabricated throughout the world. His seminal paper reporting inhibited spontaneous emission in photonic crystals is among the most highly cited papers in physics and engineering.
In the 19th century, it was observed that the sunlight striking certain materials generates detectable electric current – the photoelectric effect. This discovery laid the foundation for solar cells. Solar cells have gone on to be used in many applications. They have historically been used in situations where electrical power from the grid was unavailable.
A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is an electronic device that converts the energy of light directly into electricity by means of the photovoltaic effect. It is a form of photoelectric cell, a device whose electrical characteristics vary when it is exposed to light. Individual solar cell devices are often the electrical building blocks of photovoltaic modules, known colloquially as "solar panels". Almost all commercial PV cells consist of crystalline silicon, with a market share of 95%. Cadmium telluride thin-film solar cells account for the remainder. The common single-junction silicon solar cell can produce a maximum open-circuit voltage of approximately 0.5 to 0.6 volts.
A solar panel is a device that converts sunlight into electricity by using photovoltaic (PV) cells. PV cells are made of materials that produce excited electrons when exposed to light. The electrons flow through a circuit and produce direct current (DC) electricity, which can be used to power various devices or be stored in batteries. Solar panels are also known as solar cell panels, solar electric panels, or PV modules.
James Donald Meindl was director of the Joseph M. Pettit Microelectronics Research Center and the Marcus Nanotechnology Research Center and Pettit Chair Professor of Microelectronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. He won the 2006 IEEE Medal of Honor "for pioneering contributions to microelectronics, including low power, biomedical, physical limits and on-chip interconnect networks.”
Martin Andrew Green is an Australian engineer and professor at the University of New South Wales who works on solar energy. He was awarded the 2021 Japan Prize for his achievements in the "Development of High-Efficiency Silicon Photovoltaic Devices". He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Progress in Photovoltaics.
Allen M. Barnett was an American research professor of electrical engineering at the University of Delaware. He was the principal investigator of the DARPA-funded Consortium for Very High Efficiency Solar cells. Barnett was the founder and CEO of solar-cell producer Astropower, Inc. He was also a Professor of Advanced Photovoltaics at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) in Sydney Australia.
Hans K. Ziegler was a pioneer in the field of communication satellites and the use of photovoltaic solar cells as a power source for satellites.
SunPower Corporation is an American provider of photovoltaic solar energy generation systems and battery energy storage products, primarily for residential customers. The company, headquartered in San Jose, California, was founded in 1985 by Richard Swanson, an electrical engineering professor from Stanford University. Cypress Semiconductor bought a majority interest in the company in 2002, growing it quickly until SunPower went public in 2005. TotalEnergies, a French energy and oil company purchased a controlling interest in SunPower for US$1.37 billion in 2011.
Stuart Wenham was, at the time of his death, the director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics and Director of Academic Studies of the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at the University of New South Wales.
Ching Wan Tang is a Hong Kong–American physical chemist. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018 for inventing OLED, and was awarded the 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry. Tang is the IAS Bank of East Asia Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and previously served as the Doris Johns Cherry Professor at the University of Rochester.
Jerry M. Woodall is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Davis who is widely known for his revolutionary work on LEDs and semiconductors. Over the course of his career, he has published close to 400 scientific articles and his work has directly contributed to the development of major technologies that are used around the world, such as TVs, optical fibers, and mobile phones. Woodall currently holds over 80 U.S. patents for a variety of inventions and has received prestigious awards from IBM, NASA, and the U.S. President for his contributions to science, technology, and humanity.
Swanson's law is the observation that the price of solar photovoltaic modules tends to drop 20 percent for every doubling of cumulative shipped volume. At present rates, costs go down 75% about every 10 years.
Mark S. Lundstrom is an American electrical engineering researcher, educator, and author. He is known for contributions to the theory, modeling, and understanding of semiconductor devices, especially nanoscale transistors, and as the creator of the nanoHUB, a major online resource for nanotechnology. Lundstrom is Don and Carol Scifres Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in 2020 served as Acting Dean of the College of Engineering at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Indiana.
Joseph John Loferski was an American physicist and a professor of engineering at Brown University. The New York Times called him "a pioneer in the development of solar cells". During his long and successful career he focused primarily on photovoltaic cells and their ability to convert the energy in light to electricity. Loferski also wrote and spoke extensively on the physics of semiconductor materials such as silicon, and methods of improving the efficiency of photovoltaic cells. Loferski's work and that of other early researchers proved that semiconductor devices could produce commercially viable, pollution-free electricity.
Giovanni Spagnuolo is an Italian engineer. Since May 2016 he is Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at DIEM department of the University of Salerno, Italy.
Andres Cuevas is a professor of engineering at the Australian National University, Canberra. He was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2014 for contributions to the science and technological development of silicon solar cells.
A bifacial solar cell (BSC) is any photovoltaic solar cell that can produce electrical energy when illuminated on either of its surfaces, front or rear. In contrast, monofacial solar cells produce electrical energy only when photons impinge on their front side. Bifacial solar cells can make use of albedo radiation, which is useful for applications where a lot of light is reflected on surfaces such as roofs. The concept was introduced as a means of increasing the energy output in solar cells. Efficiency of solar cells, defined as the ratio of incident luminous power to generated electrical power under one or several suns (1 sun = 1000W/m2 ), is measured independently for the front and rear surfaces for bifacial solar cells. The bifaciality factor (%) is defined as the ratio of rear efficiency in relation to the front efficiency subject to the same irradiance.
Joseph Appelbaum is a professor (emeritus) in the Engineering Faculty at Tel Aviv University, and former holder of the Ludwig Jokel Chair of Electronics in the faculty. He is a life fellow of IEEE “for contributions to solar conversion systems”.