
Chapter 18
PV in Europe, from 1974 to 2009:
A Personal Experience
Helmut Kiess
Im Unteren Tollacher 11, CH-8162 Steinmaur, Switzerland
18.1 Insight Period: 1974–1988
Two or three years after the oil shock in 1974, a small group of
Swiss scientists of various backgrounds and institutions (I was with
Laboratories RCA in Z
¨
urich, a subsidiary of RCA corporation in the
US) gathered privately in order to discuss the question of how to
scope with the energy problem, in particular also whether solar
photovoltaics in Switzerland would be a route to go. However, first
a-Si cells, patented in 1977, had efficiencies in the range of less
than 1%, obviously too small