Solar Panels Information: How They Work
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by: JacobSmith. | Total views: 13 | Word Count: 612
If you're looking for renewable energy systems that you can use for your home then you have a number of different options. There are, for example, heat pumps that you can use for a hot water system. You can also use solar thermal panels that you can use in this way. What we'll be focusing on though is the solar panels information regarding how PV solar cells create electricity.
Solar Electricity
To be able to fully understand how solar panels create electricity, you have to know a little bit about what electricity actually is, and different ways that light can be described. Actually to fully understand everything that is going on would require some pretty extensive knowledge of physics, but we're going to keep it simple here.
In terms of what electricity is, the name itself gives a clue. It is to do with electrons. More specifically, it is the flow of electrons through a substance. That's all you really need to know about electricity at this level of understanding.
What most of learn about light at school is that it is made of electromagnetic waves. That's one way of describing it. However as you get in to more advanced physics you learn that it can also be described in terms of particles, in this case photons. It is this way of thinking about light that will be most useful here.
Solar Cells
If you were tasked with the challenge of getting light to create electricity then, what you would really have to do is get photons to make electrons move through a substance. You wouldn't be able to borrow anything from conventional electricity production either as this depends on getting turbines to spin.
Even with other renewable energy sources, it is always about getting a turbine to spin. For example with wind energy, that is created using wind turbines. And with hydropower, the movement of the water is used in order to make turbines spin. With solar energy though, it is a much more direct process to create electricity.
So how is it possible that photons hitting a substance could cause electricity to come about? Well, it's possible because of a sort of a material known as a semiconductor. One of the properties of this kind of material is that when light hits it, it makes electrons move. Now, that is not a flow yet so it doesn't create electricity directly but it is a good start.
The semiconductor that the majority of solar panels are made out of is called silicon. In order to get the electrons to flow though, the silicon has to be set up in a very specific way. There has to be to halves, one on top of the other. One of these is negatively charged, and so called n-type. The other is positively charged, and is called p-type. When photons hit electrons out of their orbit they switch sides and this creates an imbalance.
Whenever there is an imbalance in nature, if there is a way of correcting it then that correction will be made. So at this point the electrons are ready to flow, and a wire which leads to your house is provided so that they have that opportunity. And that's why electrons end up flowing in to be used on your property.
Useful Electricity
Although that, basically, is all the solar panels information you need concerning the way that they work, the electricity that comes out is not actually in the right form to be useful. All properties run off alternating current (AC) while what comes out of solar cells is direct current (DC). This is a simple problem to solve though, it just means that an inverter has to be installed as well.
About the Author
To discover extra details about solar energy, author Noah Wilson has written more about the issue at solar panels information. Learn more about the way the system functions, for example how much money you'll be able to make, and obtain a free quotation for an installation.
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