Deep inside the Sun, two atoms of hydrogen fuse into helium. The process releases an excess of energy in various forms, including photons: particles of light. These photons bounce around inside the Sun like the ball in a pinball machine, their zigzag course taking thousands, even millions of years to reach the Sun’s surface.
But then, just eight minutes after they surface, some of those photons travel 150 million kilometres to Earth, where they strike a solar cell, generating electricity. So every time you charge your mobile phone or turn on a light, you are harnessing fusion energy generated in the Sun’s interior.
But not that much. Solar energy today provides only some 5% of the world’s energy consumption, although in Australia by 2022 it was providing 14.3% of electricity generation, the bulk (9.3%) coming from rooftop photovoltaics, and the rest (5%) from largescale solar installations. Such figures will rise everywhere as
