Generation
of electricity by using solar energy
depends upon the photovoltaic effect in some specific materials. There are
certain materials that produce electric current
when these are exposed to direct sun light. This effect is seen in combination
of two thin layers of semiconductor materials. One layer of this combination
will have a depleted number of electrons. When sunlight strikes on this layer
it absorbs the photons of sunlight ray and consequently the electrons are
excited and jump to the other layer. This phenomenon creates a charge
difference between the layers and resulting to a tiny potential difference
between them. The unit of such combination of two layers of semiconductor
materials for producing electric potential difference in sunlight is called
solar cell. Silicon is normally used as the semiconductor material for
producing such solar cell. For building cell silicon material is cut into very
thin wafers. Some of these wafers are doped with impurities. Then the un-doped
and doped wafers are then sandwiched together to build solar cell. Metallic
strip is then attached to two extreme layers to collect current.
Conductive
metal strips attached to the cells take the electrical current. One solar cell
or photo-voltaic cell is not capable of producing desired electricity instead it produces very tiny amount of electricity hence for extracting desired level of
electricity desired number of such cells are connected together in both
parallel and series to form a solar module or photo voltaic module. Actually
only sunlight is not a factor the main factor is light or beam of photons to
produce electricity in solar cell. Hence a solar cell can also work in cloudy
weather as well as in moon light but then electricity production rate becomes
law as it depends upon intensity of incident light ray.
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