A Solar Journey

For starters, can we just take a moment to give thanks for the sun?

That great sphere in the sky that provides our planet with energy?Without the sun, we would have no light.

No color.

No warmth.

No life.

In the long nights of winter, darkness threatens to annihilate us—and then the sun returns. The light and the warmth of the sun renew us, every morning and every spring. It’s not surprising that humans started out worshipping the sun. What I don’t understand is why we stopped.

I didn’t think of it as sun worship when I was a kid, but I distinctly remember the signal that used to hit me when I sensed the sunlight streaming in through the glass of my window on Proustian golden wings: the sensory invitation propelling me outside to play, the light and warmth awakening my senses and my imagination, especially on those glowing spring days when the whole world seemed in blossom with light and color. It always felt to me on those days that the sun was filling my body with energy. And it was. Every living thing on our planet ultimately derives its energy from the sun. When you convert the power of the sun into human-scale measures, the number is so large that it seems unfathomable: 380,000,000,000,000,000,000 megawatts. That is more than enough power to run everything we could conceivably think to do on this planet.

I’m a long-time journalist who got into solar energy a few years ago as part of a career transition that has led to a love of and obsession with everything having to do with photovoltaics. My wife Christina is a physician and a professor. She’s also Greek, which means she loves sunlight and hates being cold. After 25 years together in the lovely but not particularly sunny Pacific Northwest, we were due for a trip. We had traveled extensively in our previous lives, our first trips together setting the tone for the relationship that we are fortunate to have, the deep friendship that got us through the hectic years of child-raising and work-induced stress. By 2023, the kids were more or less independent, Christina was up for sabbatical, and I was up for learning as much as possible about the rise of solar energy from a global perspective. Having lived through 9/11, the Great Recession and the COVID pandemic, not to mention the rise of authoritarianism and a ceaseless barrage of ever-worsening reports about the condition of the planet we inhabit and the atmosphere we rely on, we were ready for a little sunlight. We decided to rent out our house, pack a few bags, and follow the sun.

To learn more about the incredible places we traveled to on our solar journey, the wonderful people we met, the photovoltaics experts and entrepreneurs I interviewed, and the story of the great global rise of solar energy, get yourself a copy of Follow the Sun: Around the World in Search of Solar Solutions, enjoy, and please spread the word.

Solar Interview Subjects

I interviewed 50 people from 12 countries during my solar journey. A few highlights:

Photovoltaics Legend Martin Green, University of New South Wales, Australia

Adrian and Nacho Bautista, founders of the solar crowdfunding startup Fundeen, Madrid, Spain

Rong Deng, the founder of Hello Again Solar, specializing in laser-based, chemical-free solar panel recycling, Sydney, Australia

The author with Indian Institute of Technology Bombay solar researchers (L to R) B. G. Fernandes, Juzer Vasi, and Anil Kottantharayil, Mumbai, India

Destinations

Following the sun enabled us to visit some of the most beautiful and fascinating places on the planet. A few highlights, captured by my lovely and talented wife Christina Nicolaidis: