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Solar panels are devices that convert sunlight into electricity. They are made up of solar cells, which produce electricity when light hits them. Multiple solar cells connected together in a panel can provide enough power to be useful. When several solar panels are combined into an array, they work together to produce more electricity.

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Nishkarsh Agarwal
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43 views1 page

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Solar panels are devices that convert sunlight into electricity. They are made up of solar cells, which produce electricity when light hits them. Multiple solar cells connected together in a panel can provide enough power to be useful. When several solar panels are combined into an array, they work together to produce more electricity.

Uploaded by

Nishkarsh Agarwal
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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conversion efficiency and a single strip can produce up to 50 watts per square meter.

This is great news


for the 1.3 billion people in developing countries, as the strips are flexible and inexpensive to produce.
1.3 SOLAR PANELS
Solar panels are devices that convert light into electricity. They are called "solar" panels because
most of the time, the most powerful source of light available is the Sun, called Sol by astronomers.
Some scientists call them photovoltaic which means, basically, light electricity.
A solar panel is a collection of solar cells. Lots of small solar cells spread over a large area can work
together to provide enough power to be useful. The more light that hits a cell, the more electricity it
produces.
Most solar panels are made up using crystalline silicon solar cells.

Cell Module Array

Fig 1.1 Solar panel array

Solar cell, also called photovoltaic cell, any device that directly converts the energy of light into
electrical energy through the photovoltaic effect. A solar module is normally series connected
sufficient number of solar cells to provide required standard output voltage and power. When you
combine several solar panels, you create a solar array.

1.4 WORKING OF SOLAR PANEL


Generation of Current in a solar cell is known as the "light-generated current," involves two important
processes.

• Absorption of incident photons to create electron-hole pairs. Electron-hole pairs will generate in the
solar cell provided that the incident photon has an energy greater than that of the band gap. However,
electrons (in the p-type material), and holes (in the n-type material) are meta-stable and will only exist,
on average, for a length of time equal to the minority carrier lifetime before they recombine. If the
carrier recombines, then the light generated electron-hole pair is lost and no current or power can be
generated.

• Collection of these carriers by the p-n junction prevents this recombination by using a p-n junction
to spatially separate the electron and the hole. The carriers are separated by the action of the electric
field existing at the p-n junction. If the light generated minority carrier reaches the p-n junction, it is
swept across the junction by the electric field at the junction, where it is now a majority carrier. If the

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