ABSTRACT
Navigational aids were an ideal, important, and instantaneous application and market for solar electricity. The European Union (EU) implemented a Regional Solar Program (RSP) in the Sahel by installing a large number of solar water pumping systems. The EU’s RSP-1 program was carried out from 1990 to 1998 and produced excellent results. Solarex was started in 1973 as a privately financed photovoltaics (PV) company and dominated the PV business for a decade. The terrestrial PV industry was started in 1973 but by the end of 1983 the major PV manufacturers in the world were all owned by oil companies, but ultimately all of them got out of the PV business. The utilization of PV to charge batteries revolutionized the maintenance cost and operation of navigational aids, lighthouses, and buoys. The commercial installations and the utility-scale PV fields are the other area of PV systems causing losses for the utilities.
