If you are considering getting a solar panel installation at home you might ask yourself “how do solar panels work”. I have already mentioned how solar energy works in general, but what is the actual function of these dark glass panels? How do they extract energy from the sun? How do solar panels work? Let’s have a closer look at the technology behind solar panels in this article.
Let’s start with what solar power is
The sun emits a large amount of light and radiation that is bursting with energy. Even after having travelled millions of miles there is enough energy in sunlight to provide all the electricity we need. We have all experienced just how much heat there is in sunlight. On a warm summer’s day you really want to avoid getting too much of it. And while we use the heat of the sun in many ways, even to generate electricity, solar panels don’t care much about the temperature of the sunlight it gets. Even on a sunny, but freezing cold, day in winter you can get electricity from solar panels.
What we are looking for in solar panels is the transformation of the solar radiation into electricity we can use in our daily lives, the electricity that powers our kitchen appliances for example.
From sunlight into electricity
To find out how do solar panels work, it is important to briefly look at what Edmond Becquerel achieved in 1839. This French physicist discovered a way to generate an electrical current using a light source. This process is nowadays called a photovoltaic effect. The light that reached a photovoltaic cell created a current which we can transform into electricity ready for everyday use.
And now let’s look at solar panels
Okay, so what does a discovery by this man almost two centuries ago have to do with the solar panels you want to install on your house? Well, in the many decades that followed the discovery of photovoltaic cells, not much has changed. Solar panels of the 21st century use this same photovoltaic effect that Becquerel discovered. In fact, a solar panel installed at home is basically a collection of photovoltaic cells. When the sunlight reaches the solar panel, it causes the effect that originally was called the Becquerel effect. The cells in the solar panel let the light generate the electric current. An average solar panel has between 60 and 72 of those cells.
Once the light is transformed into current, it needs to be inverted from DC into AC. The wall sockets in your house are all AC sockets, so you want to have the right current for your appliances (even if some actually work on DC).
The energy generated will be stored in a battery. Since your electricity use isn’t constant throughout the day, or even throughout multiple days, it is useful to have an energy storage for when your solar panels produce more electricity than you are consuming. This way you know you will have electricity at night when there is no sunlight being converted into energy by the solar panels.
Do wearable and mobile solar panels work the same?
Over the years the quality of solar panels has improved greatly. The first solar installations were massive and generated only small amounts of electricity. Nowadays you can find solar strips on cars or small devices. You can get tiny, foldable panels to charge your phone, cook your eggs in the middle of nowhere thanks to portable water heaters or bring some fresh air into your dog’s house with solar-powered fans.
But the overall principle of the photovoltaic effect remains the same. The wearable solar panels and mobile solar chargers, just like the big panels on the roof of your house, a collection of photovoltaic cells. They are there to catch the light that hits its surface and to generate a current thanks to that.If you ever asked yourself “how do solar panels work?” then now you know it’s due to a discovery made in 1839. You might have thought renewable energy, and especially solar energy, is a rather new technology. As you can see though, it has been around for a long time. The knowhow was there at least, it took many years for scientists and engineers to develop methods to improve the efficiency of the photovoltaic effect.
Nowadays, having a couple of solar panels on your house can be enough to provide you with all the electricity you need. You can probably imagine how it will look in the future. The panels will be even smaller and more efficient. Solar panels of the future might just be powerful and affordable enough for everyone to enjoy solar energy. So how do solar panels work? Constantly better, so make sure you go solar too!