Solar Electricity pt. 1

Besides heating homes and water, solar energy also can be used to produce electricity. Two ways to generate electricity from solar energy are photovoltaics and solar thermal systems.

In this two-part post, we'll focus on Photovoltaic Electricity first...

Photovoltaic comes from the words photo meaning "light" and "volt", a measurement of electricity. Sometimes photovoltaic cells are called PV cells or solar cells for short. You are probably already familiar with solar cells. Solar-powered calculators, toys, and telephone call boxes all, use solar cells to convert light into electricity.

A photovoltaic cell is made of two thin slices of silicon sandwiched together and attached to metal wires. The top slice of silicon, called the N-layer, is very thin and has a chemical added to it that provides the layer with an excess of free electrons. The bottom slice, or P-layer, is much thicker and has a chemical added to it so that it has very few free electrons.

When the two layers are placed together, an interesting thing happens- an electric field is produced that prevents the electrons from traveling from the top layer to the bottom layer. This one-way junction with its electric field becomes the central part of the PV cell.

When the PV cell is exposed to sunlight, bundles of light energy known as photons can knock some of the electrons from the bottom P-layer out of their orbits through the electric field set up at the P-N junction and into the N-layer.

The N-layer, with its abundance of electrons, develops an excess of negatively charged electrons. This excess of electrons produces an electric force to push the additional electrons away. These excess electrons are pushed into the metal wire back to the bottom P-layer, which has lost some of its electrons.

This electrical current will continue flowing as long as radiant energy in the form of light strikes the cell and the pathway, or circuit, remains closed.

Current PV cell technology is not very efficient. Today's PV cells convert only about 10 to 14 percent of the radiant energy into electrical energy. Fossil fuel plants, on the other hand, convert from 30-40 percent of their fuel's chemical energy into electrical energy. The cost per kilowatt-hour to produce electricity from PV cells is presently three to four times as expensive as from conventional sources. However, PV cells make sense for many uses today, such as providing power in remote areas or other areas where electricity is difficult to provide. Scientists are researching ways to improve PV cell technology to make it more competitive with conventional sources.

Stay tuned for the 2nd part of this post, where we'll focus on solar thermal systems.


The bottom line is...

The future looks bright.