The Solar Panel Concept

The concept of a solar panel is very simple. A solar cell or several solar cells charging a battery or several batteries. The battery then be used to power up anything. If AC (Alternating Current) is needed, then the system will need a DC (battery) to AC converter. The only problem is that the cost of solar cell is relatively expensive and can only charge very little.

Solar Cell

A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is a large area electronic^[1] device that converts solar energy into electricity by the photovoltaic effect. Photovoltaics is the field of technology and research related to the application of solar cells for solar energy. Sometimes the term solar cell is reserved for devices intended specifically to capture energy from sunlight, while the term photovoltaic cell is used when the source is unspecified. Assemblies of cells are used to make solar modules, or photovoltaic arrays.

Solar cells have many applications. Cells are used for powering small devices such as electronic calculators. Photovoltaic arrays generate a form of renewable electricity, particularly useful in situations where electrical power from the grid is unavailable such as in remote area power systems, Earth-orbiting satellites and space probes, remote radiotelephones and water pumping applications. Photovoltaic electricity is also increasingly deployed in grid-tied electrical systems. Similar devices intended to capture energy from other sources include thermophotovoltaic cells, betavoltaics cells, and optoelectric nuclear batteries.

History of Solar Panel

The term "photovoltaic" comes from the Greek φώς (phos) meaning "light", and "voltaic", meaning electric, from the name of the Italian physicist Volta, after whom a unit of electrical potential, the volt, is named. The term "photo-voltaic" has been in use in English since 1849.^[2]

The photovoltaic effect was first recognized in 1839 by French physicist A. E. Becquerel. However, it was not until 1883 that the first solar cell was built, by Charles Fritts, who coated the semiconductor selenium with an extremely thin layer of gold to form the junctions. The device was only around 1% efficient. Sven Ason Berglund had a number of patents concerning methods of increasing the capacity of these cells. Russell Ohl patented the modern junction semiconductor solar cell in 1946 (U.S. Patent 2,402,662 , "Light sensitive device"), which was discovered while working on the series of advances that would lead to the transistor.

The modern age of solar power technology arrived in 1954 when Bell Laboratories, experimenting with semiconductors, accidentally found that silicon doped with certain impurities was very sensitive to light. This resulted in the production of the first practical solar cells with a sunlight energy conversion efficiency of around 6 percent. The first spacecraft to use solar panels was the US satellite Vanguard 1, launched in March 1958 with solar cells made by Hoffman Electronics. This milestone created interest in producing and launching a geostationary communications satellite, in which solar energy would provide a viable power supply. This was a crucial development which stimulated funding from several governments into research for improved solar cells.

In 1970 the first highly effective GaAs heterostructure solar cells were created by Zhores Alferov and his team in the USSR.^[3][4][5] Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD, or OMCVD) production equipment was not developed until the early 1980s, limiting the ability of companies to manufacture the GaAs solar cell. In the United States, the first 17% efficient air mass zero (AM0) single-junction GaAs solar cells were manufactured in production quantities in 1988 by Applied Solar Energy Corporation (ASEC). The "dual junction" cell was accidentally produced in quantity by ASEC in 1989 as a result of the change from GaAs on GaAs substrates to GaAs on Germanium (Ge) substrates. The accidental doping of Ge with the GaAs buffer layer created higher open circuit voltages, demonstrating the potential of using the Ge substrate as another cell. As GaAs single-junction cells topped 19% AM0 production efficiency in 1993, ASEC developed the first dual junction cells for spacecraft use in the United States, with a starting efficiency of approximately 20%. These cells did not utilize the Ge as a second cell, but used another GaAs-based cell with different doping. Eventually GaAs dual junction cells reached production efficiencies of about 22%. Triple Junction solar cells began with AM0 efficiencies of approximately 24% in 2000, 26% in 2002, 28% in 2005, and in 2007 have evolved to a 30% AM0 production efficiency, currently in qualification.

In 2006 Spectrolab's cells achieved 40.7% efficiency in lab testing.^[6]

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have set a world record in solar cell efficiency with a photovoltaic device that converts 40.8 percent of the light that hits it into electricity. This is the highest confirmed efficiency of any photovoltaic device to date

Solar Cell