This release will be the precedent of the telephone industry

Recent cuts of electricity in South Africa recall that energy remains a scarce resource impeding their growth in emerging countries. However, advances in solar technology announce an energy revolution, both by the solar contribution by the economic model and the organization behind.

Go to the Mauritanian village of Matamoulana, 1,000 people in the desert saharo-Sahelian. There is only by what geologists have found water 80 metres underground. A four-hour trail of Nouakchott, it will probably never connected to the Mauritanian electric network, because too far and too isolated. The main source of energy, they are donkeys, at four to their noria, aided sometimes wind farm. These sources limited and random curb the development of the village. Every reason to believe that the situation will remain fragile, even if the introduction of the mobile phone a little broke the isolation. This situation is repeated constantly in the villages of emerging countries.

But a failure occurred. Gradually, NGOs are beginning to install solar panels which have a life of twenty-five years with minimal maintenance. These panels allow mechanize access to water, but also to operate the relay of a cell phone. Their energy intake low, but constant, the difference of wind turbines, and independent of the national network, gradually change the perspectives of the people. Information, that this is the television the telephone or the Internet, becomes permanent, although limited, and no longer dependent on passing travellers. In a close perspective, it becomes possible to abandon the generators with a more expensive oil for electric motors. Reliable access to sources of electrical energy, same low, reason to hope with the end of the chores of wood, the time lost, personal risk and deforestation.

However, with a cost of EUR 200 per square metre of solar panel, this system remains too expensive for the only villagers who always dependent on international aid. Their classic technology (polysilicon) provides limited yields, 15 to 20 only of the energy received becoming electricity. But according to a study by Deutsche Bank, as the solar industry saw his industrial experience curve classic, declining prices allow to consider a balance between the cost of solar energy and from an electric network traditional by 2015.

This release will be the precedent of the telephone industry. Today, 400,000 African villages, 45 have a mobile coverage against 3 for fixed lines. The arrival of the mobile phone has allowed not only to open up these villages, but also the development of a declination of microfinance and micro-entrepreneurship models. Many emerging countries have thus lived in a few years a "quantum leap" in telecommunications, based on a decentralised technical architecture that greatly lessen continuous fixed infrastructure.

The solar industry is poised to cross the same energy jump, by adding a critical component to the decentralized architecture. Indeed, networks unlike electric nationals who must rely on organizations central or at least regional to install and maintain the lines, once installed solar panels need not of a corporation to perform maintenance. It is legitimate to predict that, unlike in developed countries, the great energy of emerging countries will focus on limited fixed networks (capital and major cities) to provide electrical power to large consumers (industries, hospitals, Governments, airports). Even if it is not perfect because the manufacture of solar cells and batteries is clean, this "dual" model is an excellent new energy for the planet. This progress has a ripple effect, since it should strengthen the development of mobile telephony which current brake is the difficulty, in some areas, charges the phone battery. If today the dynamo type loaders have some success, solar chargers for phone (still 80 more expensive than the dynamos) should be at a competitive price by two or three years.

The alternative solar pourrait not only make a step to developing countries, but also to question the centralized model of Western specialists. In countries with dispersed habitats, such as the United States, solar will rapidly become a significant extra energy, encouraged by the subsidies of the Federal State, but also proactive States such as California. Currently observed the emergence in the American West of an economic model of "decentralized utility" in which solar panels manufacturers finance equipment of individuals, is paying by selling excess electricity to energy reduced to the rank of Distributor.

Technology and economics of solar energy are likely to make a quantum leap in access to energy for the part of humanity which is the most private, non-wait for a hypothetical connection to the fixed network, but also providing a more durable than those used energy today short-term. Combined with progress on the cost of storage, solar energy could call into question our energy models, to Matamoulana as in Los Angeles.