The Truth on How Does a Solar Panel Actually Work?
The Truth on How Does a Solar Panel Actually Work
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The layman's answer is they absorb the sun's rays and converts it to electricity but the process is not as simple as people may think it takes certain scientific principles to make a solar panel work.
In order to figure out how things work, people must always know the origins or the actual ingredients that make objects work and the main component of a solar panel are solar cells more commonly known as a Photovoltaic cell. A PV cell is the main converter of the sun's rays into electric energy.
These cells are made from silicon and act as a semiconductor to create electrical energy from the sun. It does this by combining atomic particles together and forming electrical energy and requires metal sheets on the top and bottom side of it in order to complete a panel.
Each PV Cell contains a certain amount of wattage and this act as the gauge for knowing how much electricity you can harness with your solar energy system's size and quality of material.
Solar Panels ability to absorb energy and convert it to electricity depend on the material used and ranges from 10-20% of the total light reflected on it.
After gathering electricity, it should either be stored or transferred directly to appliances, if you use an off-grid setup you will have solar batteries for storing excess electricity which will be used during night time and other cloudy and rainy days.
On the other hand, if you use a grid type system all of the electricity will flow through your appliances during the day time and will shift sources to traditional electricity lines during night time.
Fun fact: Solar Panels can actually gather energy from any light source. It can actually gather any energy from a light source so light from the stars, street lamps or flashlights can actually be used to create electricity provided that there is enough of it for the panels to gather.
Overall, I think that governments and private institutions should continually invest in the advancement of this technology and I believe that in due time, solar energy might be the sole energy source we need especially if we can increase the amount of energy we gather to around 50% of the sun's rays to harvest sufficient energy for our purpose.