An Easy to Understand Explanation of How Solar Panels Work
Solar energy is getting a lot of attention these days. Its time to answer the question: how do they actually work? It is not obvious how a panel can convert the sun's rays into electricity without moving parts. This article will help explain the process in terms that hopefully anyone can understand.
The most basic definition of how solar panels work is that the sun strikes a certain material, it excites electrons and creates a current and voltage that can be used to power devices. Now let's delve a little deeper.
Silicon: Not Just for Computer Chips
First, silicon is taken from the earth. Silicon is one of the earth's most abundant elements. It's found in sand and rocks of all types. You've probably heard of 'Silicon Valley', the hotbed of technology research and investment in California. It is so called because silicon is used in computer chips.
Silicon is a semi-conductor. Think of copper, a conductor, as in copper wires. Now think of rubber, an insulator, such as the coating on a copper wire. Silicon falls somewhere in between and is therefore called a semi-conductor. This property is exploited in computer chips and solar panels to handle tiny reactions that generate electrical currents. An electrical current is basically a "flow". Picture a wire as a tiny pipe and the current as the rate at which the "water" (in this case electricity) flows through the pipe.
Frequently Asked Questions
-
QUESTION:
How do Solar Panels work, and how it can generate electricity?
Can u guys help on how solar panels work and how it generates electricity?(or u can give me a good website that has solar panel info on it)
~Thanks in advance!~
-
ANSWER:
Solar panels are made up of a number of solar cells. A solar cell will generate from 0.5 to 0.55 volts DC and a current depending on the size and type of cell. The current can be milli-amps or amps. We have a list of solar cell manufactures on our blog http://brutuscontry.com under products that are sorted by watts per area. Also go to wikipedia to get more detailed information on solar cells.
-
-
QUESTION:
How do solar panels work?
I need a very basic explanation of how solar panels work. You install them on your roof, and I'm assuming they take in heat from the sun to power your house?As you can tell, I know very little, but am interested in learning more.
-
ANSWER:
It really has nothing at all to do with heat but rather a chemical reaction.Solar panels are made up of many small squares called photovoltaic cells. The photovoltaic cells are usually made up of crystalline silicon under a glass cover. These cells are connected by tiny wires to the solar panel. When sunlight hits the crystalline silicon the material reacts by kicking off electrons. The electrons are collected by the tiny wires in the form of a direct current (DC). This DC current goes through an inverter which turns it into a usable alternating current (AC) electricity which can be stored in batteries or fed into an electrical grid system. A group of solar panels make up a solar array. The larger the array the more electricity you collect. Expensive panels are about 15% efficient while cheaper ones are 5-10 %. You can find sites that show you step by step how to build a solar panel in just a few days.
If you produce more electricity then you use you can sell it to the electric company.
-
-
QUESTION:
How do solar panels work? In the easiest way to understand, for those of us who aren't scientists.?
How do they work. What parts are they made of?-
ANSWER:
They're made of semiconductor materials. If you have no scientific background this is quickly going to get beyond you but I'll try to simplify.The solar cells can be made of any semiconductor. Silicon is the most common type because it's cheap, but there are other materials, even experimentation with organic materials. (By organic here, we mean carbon compounds, not necessarily derived from living things.)
Anyway, the way they work is that there's what's called a built-in potential in the material, produced by "doping" the material with small amounts of other materials that change its electrical properties so that current passes easier one way than the other. These junctions are engineered to have a built in potential that's just a little less than the typical energy of a visible light photon. When the photon hits the material, it pushes an electron from one side to the other. The photon's energy is thus converted to electrical energy that can power a circuit.
Not all of the energy of the photon turns into useful energy. Some of the photons don't hit in quite the right spot or the right way to turn into usable energy. They just end up heating the material.
The best solar cells have efficiencies in the 30% range.
-
-
QUESTION:
How do solar panels work and how are they installed?-
ANSWER:
Solar photovoltaic panels contain arrays of solar cells that convert light into electricity. Solar cells, or PV cells, rely on the photovoltaic effect, which describes how certain materials can convert sunlight into electricity to absorb the energy of the sun and cause current to flow between two oppositely charged layers. Individual solar cells provide a relatively small amount of power, but electrical output is significant when connected together as an array making up a panel.On a bright day, the sun delivers about 1 kW/m² to the Earth's surface. Typical solar panels have an average efficiency of 12%, with the best commercially available panels at 20%, and recent prototype panels at around 30%. This would result in 200 W/m². However, not all days have bright sunlight, and therefore not enough solar energy can be captured.
A solar water heater uses the sun's energy to heat a fluid, which is used to transfer the heat to a heat storage vessel. In the home, for example, sanitary hot water would be heated and stored in a hot water cylinder. Panels on the roof have an absorber plate to which fluid circulation tubes are attached. The absorber, usually coated with a dark selective coating, assures the conversion of the sun's radiation into heat, while fluid circulating through the tubes carries the heat away where it can be used or stored. The heated fluid is pumped to a heat exchanger, which is a coil in the storage vessel or an external heat exchanger where it gives off its heat and is then circulated back to the panel to be reheated. This provides an effective way of harnessing the sun's energy.
-