The conversion of sunlight directly into electricity via the photovoltaic effect — the only major form of large-scale generation that uses no turbine and no moving parts — and the technology whose roughly 99% cost collapse over recent decades has made clean electricity, in many places, the cheapest humanity has ever produced.
Every other major way of making electricity spins something. Coal plants boil water and the steam spins a turbine. Nuclear plants do the same. Wind turns blades. Hydropower turns a wheel. The turbine is nearly invisible — the hidden machine at the center of the modern grid. Solar panels break that pattern completely. A silicon cell sits in the sun. Electrons shake loose from atoms. Current flows. No heat engine. No steam. No spinning shaft. No moving parts at all. That difference turns out to matter enormously. It is part of why the price of solar electricity fell by roughly 99 percent over recent decades, making new utility-scale solar, in the best locations and financing conditions, some of the cheapest electricity humanity has ever generated.