subject: How Solar Energy Panels Are Made [print this page] Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails...or sugar and spice and everything nice? Ask today's younger generation and they may say it's Beiber boys and grown-up toys...that's what solar energy panels are made of...well, sort of.
Since Justin Beiber is the sunshine of a lot of young hearts, and there's no question he shines on stage, he creates electrifying energy in the crowd. It's really unfortunate we don't know how to capture this kind of energy to power our homes and businesses. In the meantime, we're fully exploring how to convert the sunlight's energy into electricity to operate our homes and businesses.
You're wondering, I know, seriously...what are solar energy panels made of? Interestingly, they're made of connected impure silicon crystals that are captured and used in solar cells. Impure silicon crystals are used because pure silicon isn't active electrically. The impurities are what create the tendency to either attract...or lose...electrons. Sunlight, along with all other light, contains energy. Sunlight hitting the impure silicon crystals creates an electrical current as the electrons get up and move. Freed by light absorption, electrons bounce, and then they're forced to flow in a certain direction so they create electrical current. Then, metal contacts are placed at the top and bottom of the silicon crystal PV (photovoltaic) cell, and power is extracted. Photo...meaning light, and voltaic...meaning electricity, is where the term PV comes from. Most people have...or know someone who has...a calculator that's powered by a PV cell. Calculators and many small devices, including landscaping lights, are most often solar powered by PV cells.
Grouped together, a series of PV cells are electronically connected and placed into a frame, and called a panel. A solar array is comprised of a group of panels connected together.
It takes a lot of solar energy panels to power the average American home. In an effort to reduce the number of panels necessary to produce sufficient energy to operate a home, or charge a battery for an automobile or generator, materials other than silicon are being experimented with, and some success is being achieved in thin film solar technology, which uses smaller cheaper crystals, like copper-indium-gallium-selenide, that are shaped into flexible films. They're not currently as effective, however, as silicon in creating electricity.
As a result, the search for better, newer ways to create solar energy cells continues.
Going back to the beginning of the creation of solar energy cells, one would find a littered path of fossil fuel competition. However, for hundreds of years, man has been working on harnessing the sun's energy. Slowly but surely, we are making progress in our ability to harness and use this renewable energy source.
Both the Romans and the Greeks found that by covering their south-facing window openings with glass or mica, they could capture and hold in the heat in the winter. Using the sun's energy passively, they discovered the most optimal advantage.
Believing Europe would eventually run out of not only wood but coal, a man named Augusta Mouchout developed the first steam engine that was sun-powered, although it was not done passively. William Gyrlls Adams, in the same time period, found that when light was shined on selenium, the material shed electrons, which created electricity.
The cost of capturing and converting the sun's energy into electricity made it too expensive for any real development to occur until sometime later. Research by Albert Einstein, combined with work done in 1953 by Bell Laboratories, renewed non-passive solar innovation, which resulted in the creation of electricity from solar photovoltaic (PV) cells.
Even with the progress made, solar power was simply considered too expensive. Scientists Daryl Chapin and Calvin Fuller created measurable electrical current with PV cells, but research and development into the field stagnated and lay dormant for some time.
Until the Arab Oil Embargo in 1973 showed how heavily the Western world relied on oil, solar energy laid in stagnation. Then, the U. S. government led a desperate effort to find fossil fuel energy alternatives. With the government providing research subsidies, photovoltaic solar energy cells were finally being produced more economically. In the 1990's, Japan rushed headlong into PV energy in rooftop solar. This resulted in a significant price reduction in PV energy cell expense.
Solar energy panels today, however, remain more expensive than conventional energy sources, somewhat cumbersome, and...in some locations...relatively ineffective. The primary drawback of solar energy panels for normal household use remains the cost of the individual PV panels, and the number of panels necessary to generate large amounts of electricity.
Where sunlight abounds in third world countries, especially rural areas, however, where homes are small, solar panels are very cost-effective. They're cost-effective for the people using them, and for the of the carbon footprint they...don't...leave.
