the name depends on who you are

The 1960's earth children, hippies, they saw the need to protect mother earth, so they grew older and looked to the power of the sun and clean green energy...

Solar power....so green so sexy.... and NASA was using them... Gerald Pearson developed them in the 50's Bell lab began producing them in 1953.

but....

What about the engineers? The guys who had come up with, improve upon and develop the cells, a means to collect the suns rays and transfer the heat into usable energy?

They may be all for a clean green earth now, but in the 50's and 60's...it was money and advanced science (After all, in the 1950's the earth was a blue marble, not green. There was no known climate shift, global warming, ozone holes).

No self respecting engineer (even today) would want to say they work with green energy or solar panels, lets face it, lame names.
Engineers and Scientists like things that have names you either can't pronounce or wish you didn't have to.

So...
Photovoltaics.

By the way, if you say it as it's spelled, photo-volt-aics. it's a pain to remember and hard on the tongue. so, sneakily, you regroup the letters, photo-vol-taics. now it rolls off the tongue, sounds cool, and since most people have no idea what it means, the engineer can explain the process making themselves sound, all knowing and full of wisdom.

"The photovoltaic effect is the creation of voltage and electric current in a material upon exposure to light and it's physical and chemical property/ phenomenon.............blah..........blah..........blah....."


Let's just say it is cooler sounding. And hopefully without pissing off too many engineers, we know they like to make things more difficult than they truly need be. I know two women married to engineers, and both agree, if they need to hang a picture in the house, they wait for the husbands to go off to work... One said it saves on the prep time of ladders, levels and laser guide lines.

Solar power explained:

Solar power explained (Engineer)