ABSTRACT
The big oil companies looked at the situation from their point of view. Why should they get involved in photovoltaic (PV) power generation? Their incentive was that if the sun’s nuclear energy was going to replace the oil or gas, which they were selling, then they should consider the sun’s nuclear power also as fuel, and that was their business, they had to be in it.By the end of 1983, the three major PV manufacturers in the world were owned by oil companies. It is, however, interesting to look at the entire picture. Which oil company got involved in PV and what were they doing?Exxon started in 1973 with Solar Power Corporation (SPC). After Elliot Berman left in 1975, they discontinued SPC’s direct European presence. They continued to be in commercial PV, but they mostly expanded their government project business. After President Reagan slashed the PV budget, SPC had excellent technical people and they tried to sell more to the commercial market, but commercial sales have to be built up and that cannot be done very fast. Losing the government demo business and not able to replace it with commercial, Exxon discontinued SPC in 1984 and sold its assets to Solarex.
