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Passing on the baton: 50 years of UK-ISES

9 October 2024

Pioneers of photovoltaic research in the UK came together to celebrate 50 years of the UK branch of the International Solar Energy Society – and to pass on the torch to a new generation

A certain sense of astonishment was in the air at the Royal Institution (RI) in September, where its director Katherine Mathieson welcomed some of the founders of British solar energy research back to where the UK branch of the International Solar Energy Society (UK-ISES) was established 50 years ago.

Prof Bernard McNelis, who became interested in solar power in 1973, brought with him a primitive panel about the size of a forearm. The contrast with the vast ones on display at Solar & Storage Live Birmingham the following week, some with capacities approaching a kilowatt, could not have been plainer.

“Over the past 50 years, things have become much cheaper, more efficient – and make economic sense,” he said. “I dreamt about doing it in the UK and people used to laugh. Now we see it everywhere,” he added.

However, the event was tinged with sadness. “Today is a celebration and a shutdown of the society as it is,” said the professor, its work being picked up by the Institute of Physics’ Photovoltaics Science, Applications and Technology (PVSAT) Conference and ISES itself – the day’s proceedings being added to the online ISES solar energy museum.

Prof McNelis said that UK-ISES, “has done its job – and now it’s time for a new generation. I wish PV SAT and solar research in this country well for the next 50 years.”

Prof Bernard McNelis with an early solar panel

Among the other luminaries at the packed event was Dame Mary Archer, who worked at the RI on photoelectrochemistry as a postdoc – “a quiet little backwater,” until the 1973 oil crisis, “and then suddenly the world was extremely interested,” she said.

After attending UNESCO’s ‘The Sun in the Service of Mankind’ summit that year, finding 40 British delegates unknown to each other, she became UK-ISES’ founding hon. secretary in January 1974. Though later drifting away from academia, in her words, Dame Mary maintained a “lifelong interest” in solar energy, writing or co-editing a number of works on the subject and chairing the National Energy Foundation from 1988 to 2000.

She said that the event was “laying up [UK-ISES] with the civilian equivalent of full military honours,” its huge collection of books and proceedings joining those of such scientific titans as Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday at the RI. She described it as “a bittersweet end”.

By the end of the 1974, UK-ISES had 400 members, and was running an average of four technical conferences a year in the late 1970s. Its fortunes waned over the 80s, moving from the RI to less expensive locations and running only one conference in 1990.

The 90s saw something of a renaissance, initially with assistance from the Franklin Company in Birmingham and later moving to the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth and then Oxford Brookes University.

However, following the untimely death in 2022 of 21-year chair Professor Mick Hutchins (who founded the Solar Energy Materials Research Laboratory at Oxford Brookes and initiated PVSAT), it was decided to formally wrap up UK-ISES at its 50th anniversary.

Professor Nicola Pearsall said that, when the body was founded, photovoltaics were “not really seen as useful in the UK,” apart from having a small potential for exports. Nevertheless, “the pioneers carried on [and] by the 1980s we were seeing much more applications,” which as the European Academies Science Advisory Council’s Energy Programme Director, Dr Bill Gillett, explained, included the first residential PV system in the UK. A total of 4.6kW of grid-connected capacity was wired up on Milton Keynes homes in 1984.

Given solar energy’s evolution from researchers’ dreams in 1970s to mainstream energy source today, there was a warm welcome for Professor Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Adviser at the UK’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. He emphasised that solar energy is a key part of the UK Clean Energy Mission 2030, the Solar Taskforce is working with government, industry and regulators to drive growth in the solar sector while mitigating impacts on environment and local communities, and that innovation is still required to drive a circular economy approach to PV.

The final meeting of UK-ISES

UK-ISES shared some heritage with Solar Energy UK, which was founded as the Solar Trade Association in 1978. Founded by David Gerassi, it held early meetings alongside UK-ISES, though at that point its focus was on solar thermal technologies.

Chief Executive Chris Hewett said he was “honoured” to be among the greats of the solar research community, the progress seen over recent years making “the work you started incredibly important.”

SEUK now represents “a growing and substantial sector in the UK,” and with the forthcoming Future Home Standard, the residential market alone “could easily get a gigawatt a year,” he added. Moreover, “in the not-too-distant future, there will be 100% renewables on the grid.”

“Gas generation was down 25% last year and this year we are expecting it to shrink by another 25%. Many said that this was impossible – but it’s happening in California and in Australia as well,” he told the gathering. In California, battery energy storage is now the largest supplier to the grid at certain times. “Once we have abundant solar energy, batteries get more exciting,” he added.

Last year, $3bn was invested in solar production across the world – more than oil extraction – and “it’s not rocket science to install,” said Hewett. Furthermore, the government is now actively backing the sector, whereas previously it grew “despite the government”.

But challenges remain – “a lot of myths” and scare stories are still being bandied around, there is a skills challenge and the cheap power that solar offers is not yet filtering down to consumers. Then there is the perennial problem of grid connectivity, too.

But the prize is great: “A low, stable energy price, forever – and we will have a shot at preventing dangerous climate change,” Hewett concluded.

Gareth Simkins, Senior Communications Adviser, Solar Energy UK