Solar Power & How Its woks
-By Maulik Joshi
Light to Electricity
The generation of electricity from sunlight is not much different to any other energy conversion. Take oil for example: Oil comes from dead plant life from millions of years ago. Burning oil gives us heat and thus energy or electricity. But where did all those plants get their energy from?... The sun! Solar power simply takes out the millions of years and the negative implications of extracting and burning oil but the result is the same: Electricity.
So how does solar power work? Well, light from the sun hits the solar cells in solar panels and through a photo voltaic process (which is explained in detail at the bottom of this page) turns the light into power.
How much power?
The only two things you need to understand here is that a Watt is used for measuring a unit of electricity and a light bulb is something you use to light your house. So..
1 square meter of light coming directly from the sun has enough power in it to power ten 100 Watt light bulbs. Solars panels currently operate at about 13% efficiency (they only convert about 13% of the light into electricity) and thus produce 130 watts. Just over one light bulb of power.
What to do with all that power!
Here you need to understand that the power generated from solar panels is not that same power that comes out of your mains plug socket.
From you plugs you get 230 volts A/C (alternating current). From a solar panel you will get about 12 volts D/C (direct current). Without going to much into techinical stuff, basically without something called an invertor you can't plug solar panels into your mains.. but you can charge a battery. With an inverted you can actually sell power you don't use back to the national grid. By law the electricity companies have to buy back your power at the same rate as they charge you. In some countries the government offers grants for this as well.
How solar power works in detail
Well here is how does solar power work from a far more technical view. So let us start our journey over a million years ago at the center of the sun. Several atoms fuse together creating photons which then take a million years to reach the surface of the sun. From here they are then hurled towards us at a rate fast enough to cover 93 million miles in just 8 minutes.
After this short journey they slam into the solar panels on your roof and into solar cells otherwise know as photovoltaic cells. The PV cells are usually made of semi conducint materials like silicon.
How efficient are solar panels
Modern solar panels differ greatly in efficiency depending on the manufacturer. Solar power efficiency has been standardized into 5 tiers in an effort to help consumers know exactly what they are buying. Follow this link for more information about solar performance.
Most solar panels have an efficiency upwards of 14% in full sunlight which means that they turn 14% of sunlight into energy. It may not sound much but it actually is when considering that lights bulbs operate at only 4% efficiency and plants are only about 5% efficient.
Go to solar power efficiency from how does solar power work for more information including detailed solar panel manufacturer efficiency information.
This article is written by Maulik Joshi.
*May be the some of the information taken from the good sources to make the article more informative.