The heart and soul of photovoltaics shine in Chasing the Sun 

Three cheers for Neville Williams. In his fascinating book, Chasing the Sun – Solar Adventures Around the World, this solar home system (SHS) guru reveals himself as the essence of why anyone reading this review has chosen to be involved in the solar revolution. 

Fresh air: The guru of solar home systems breathes life into photovoltaics.

Here is an author who knows how to take the stuffiness out of the term »photovoltaics,« a word Williams disdainfully refers to with an »ugh,« and breathe life into the brief history of solar electricity. This is not a book from the brain, but from the soul – the perfect read for the PV aficionado tired of yet another analytically dull report.

The book starts with a look back on the days of US President Jimmy Carter and his support for solar after the oil embargo, giving a glimpse into the good and bad camps of Carter's then newly founded Department of Energy (DOE), where Williams started his solar career. When Carter's successor, Ronald Reagan, moved his oil cronies into the DOE, Williams moved on to Greenpeace as its US media director in the 1980s.

But »the gloom and doom« of the environmental group's national branch, which sought negative headlines rather than solutions, led the Texan on a worldwide quest for something more, a journey that fills the bulk of the book. In 1990, he started the non-profit Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), which promoted solar power for a decade by setting up pilot solar rural electrification programs in eleven developing countries, including Zimbabwe, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, and China. Seven years later, he launched the Solar Electric Light Company (SELCO), a group of companies that has overcome daunting challenges to bring solar electricity to 50,000 families in India, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam.

Williams deals out praise and scorn in equal measure in Chasing the Sun. He trashes the World Bank for its bureaucratic delays in supporting solar. Shell, along with its solar and renewables arms, gets taken to task for trying horn in on SELCO's Indian operation. There are uplifting stories, like that of the Chinese peasant so charmed by his SHS that he named his child Guang Dian, Chinese for photovoltaics. Williams gives a past to names of our PV present, such as Paul Maycock, the editor of PV News, who made solar waves at the DOE and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and Jeremy Leggett, the head of the UK's Solar Century, who, like Williams, once worked for Greenpeace. Some get both ends of the stick, like S. David Freeman, who was so instrumental in the solar program at the Los Angeles municipal utility, but once made a power-hungry grab to control SELF.

Anyone who has ever been involved with the »implementation« of a solar »application« – more jargon on Williams' hate list – would do well to read this book. 

Chasing the Sun – Solar Adventures Around the World
Neville Williams
New Society Publishers, 2005
320 pages, paperback
$18.95
ISBN: 0865715378

William P. Hirshman
© PHOTON International, January 2006