7 Interesting Facts You May Not Know About Solar Panels

From lighting birds on fire, to gathering energy in the shade, and powering airplanes.

They're popping up all over on businesses, in car parking lots — doubling as covered shade —, and on the rooftops of homes. However, a lot of people are still unsure about the reflective plates and if they really lower their energy bills.

Now, I can't tell you that they'll for sure cut costs and that the eco-friendly option is the way to go, but what I can share with you are some pretty interesting and weird facts.

First off, I want to address something I've always heard about and never looked into, but here my first gruesome nugget of knowledge.

1. SOLAR PANELS CAN INCINERATE BIRDS

There's a lot of crispy birds out there or feathered friends with a killer tan.

In 2016, a brand new study estimated that the hundreds of utility-scale solar farms around the U.S. kill nearly 140,000 birds annually.

One leading theory says that the birds mistake the glare from solar panels for the surface of a lake and swoop in for a landing, with deadly results. Photovoltaic panels (the type of solar panels homeowners install on their roofs) can also kill a smaller number of birds. Although, this has only been documented in large utility-scale installations in the desert.

2. THE FIRST SOLAR PANEL CELL WAS INVENTED IN 1941

In 1839, Alexandre Edmond Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect — the ability to create an electric current from the sun’s rays. Soon after, Russell Ohl invented the first solar panel cell in 1941 and the first commercial panel was put out by Bell Laboratories in 1954.

3. SOLAR POWER CAN FUEL AIRPLANES

I knew that cars and trains were dabbling in solar energy, but had no clue they were using them on certain airplanes. So, what happens when a solar energy airplane is flying at night or underneath an incredibly dense cloud? Would the aircraft plummet down to the ground?

This leads me to the next neat and interesting fact about solar panels.

4. SOLAR PANELS CAN PRODUCE POWER WITHOUT DIRECT SUNLIGHT

Solar panels can capture different parts of the sun’s light spectrum.

So, if the sun’s not directly beaming on the panels, or it happens to be a gloomy day, it doesn’t mean the sun's rays aren’t being captured and utilized by the solar panel cells to produce power. Pretty neat, huh?

5. SOLAR PANELS PRODUCE ABOUT 10 KILOWATTS OF ENERGY PER SQUARE FOOT

Here's some "sciencey" stuff.

Kilowatts hours (kWh) are used to measure solar-powered electricity and most solar panels have approximately 225-watt capacities, with the ability to generate 20-watts per square foot. In perspective, the average home needs about 30 solar panels to meet its own energy usage requirements.

6. CHINA IS THE WORLD LEADER IN SOLAR ENERGY... BY A LOT, TOO

Solar energy is starting to get a lot of attention in the U.S., but we're tiny potatoes compared to China. In 2017, GTM Research estimates that the U.S. will install 12.4 GW of new solar power systems. China installed 24.4 GW in the first half alone, and will likely pass 50 GW for the full year. To put China's 2017 solar installations into perspective, that 50 GW of solar would power 8.2 million U.S. homes.

That was a lot of numbers, right? Sorry about that.

7. CALIFORNIA IS #1 FOR SOLAR IN THE U.S.

No state in the U.S. has driven the solar industry forward more than California.

What's neat about California's solar market is that it's well distributed between small, rooftop systems and some of the largest solar power plants in the world.