How does a solar panel work?

Electricity is all about negative, positive and neutral states.  Silicon is the main ingredient in a solar cell, at least the active part excluding the frame and other materials during solar panel construction, to hold it together and make it useable.  The reason that silicon is used, without getting into the nitty-gritty of physics and chemistry, is because the electron bond with a silicon atom is relatively weak.

Because of these weak bonds there is a relatively easy transfer of electrical energy through the electrons in silicon.  Silicon is also easily bonded with many other chemicals.  So we can take other chemicals and create something similar to what is referred to as a p-n junction.  The p refers to positive and the n refers to negative, which we need for an electron flow and thus electrical current.  Just as a transistor or diode has a p-n junction, which allows for current flow with a small bias voltage, we can also create a p-n junction with two wafers of silicon with one doped as p and the other doped as n to create current flow in a solar panel.

These two wafers of p and n doped silicon are placed just enough apart so that there can be current flow.  The next phase is to add sunlight.  The sunlight will actually excite the electrons within the silicon wafers and due to this excitation there will be current flow from the n-doped silicon wafer to the p-doped silicon wafer.

Another interesting element of a solar panel is the anti-reflective coating that is on the protective glass shield over the silicon wafers.  Even though glass has a very low reflective quality to it will still reflect some of the light sunlight away from the silicon wafers.  Thin-film engineers are still working on a cost effective solution to lower this reflectivity.  If you wear eyeglasses you have probably been confronted with the option for an anti-reflective coating for them.  The anti-reflective coating that goes on eye glasses is applied in relatively small machines only coating on average about 20-40 pairs at a time and are much too small to coat solar panels on a production level.

This was somewhat of a middle level explanation of how a solar panel works.  I also wanted to let  you know that sometimes solar panels are referred to by different terms such as PV, which stands for photovoltaic, which actually refers to what is happening in a solar panel but you may also see them called solar cells, individual cells of a larger solar panel and now there are solar shingles out on the market and what is known as thin film, solar film or some other variation.  For more facts about solar power visit more of our articles.

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