Energy becomes the basic requirement for the existence of our human life. All over the world, India is one of the largest electricity producer and consumer as well. On July 30, 2012, a major power blackout which has occurred in most of the northern and eastern regions in India and the reason behind this blackout is the lack of primary resources (coal, oil, natural gas, etc) technical failures, overutilization, generation cost, etc. Finally, this discussion lead us to find renewable energy resources which are environmentally benign. One such resource is the sun. Now people have looked at the utilization of solar energy but still couldn’t achieve more than 40% of efficient conversion of sunlight into electrical energy. This efficiency calculation is in terms of converting visible light which is only 40% of the solar spectrum into electrical energy. Almost 50% of the solar spectrum is in the form of infrared. This article gives an idea of where people started with solar research and where exactly they are now, solar characteristics and finally the new approach of converting infrared energy into electrical energy, thereby increasing the utilization of solar spectrum. © 2017, Central Board of Irrigation and Power. All rights reserved.