Most solar cells are a few square centimetres in area and protected from the environment by a thin coating of glass or transparent plastic. Because a typical 10 cm × 10 cm (4 inch × 4 inch) solar cell generates only about two watts of electrical power (15 to 20 percent of the energy of light incident on their surface), cells are usually combined in series to boost the voltage or in parallel to increase the current. A solar, or photovoltaic (PV), module generally consists of 36 interconnected cells laminated to glass within an aluminum frame. In turn, one or more of these modules may be wired and framed together to form a solar panel. Solar panels are slightly less efficient at energy conversion per surface area than individual cells, because of inevitable inactive areas in the assembly and cell-to-cell variations in performance. The back of each solar panel is equipped with standardized sockets so that its output can be combined with other solar panels to form a solar array. A complete photovoltaic system may consist of many solar panels, a power system for accommodating different electrical loads, an external circuit, and storage batteries. Photovoltaic systems are broadly classifiable as either stand-alone or grid-connected systems.
Stand-alone systems contain a solar array and a bank of batteries directly wired to an application or load circuit. A battery system is essential to compensate for the absence of any electrical output from the cells at night or in overcast conditions; this adds considerably to the overall cost. Each battery stores direct current (DC) electricity at a fixed voltage determined by the panel specifications, although load requirements may differ. DC-to-DC converters are used to provide the voltage levels demanded by DC loads, and DC-to-AC inverters supply power to alternating current (AC) loads. Stand-alone systems are ideally suited for remote installations where linking to a central power station is prohibitively expensive. Examples include pumping water for feedstock and providing electric power to lighthouses, telecommunications repeater stations, and mountain lodges.
Grid-connected systems integrate solar arrays with public utility power grids in two ways. One-way systems are used by utilities to supplement power grids during midday peak usage. Bidirectional systems are used by companies and individuals to supply some or all of their power needs, with any excess power fed back into a utility power grid. A major advantage of grid-connected systems is that no storage batteries are needed. The corresponding reduction in capital and maintenance costs is offset, however, by the increased complexity of the system. Inverters and additional protective gear are needed to interface low-voltage DC output from the solar array with a high-voltage AC power grid. Additionally, rate structures for reverse metering are necessary when residential and industrial solar systems feed energy back into a utility grid.
The simplest deployment of solar panels is on a tilted support frame or rack known as a fixed mount. For maximum efficiency, a fixed mount should face south in the Northern Hemisphere or north in the Southern Hemisphere, and it should have a tilt angle from horizontal of about 15 degrees less than the local latitude in summer and 25 degrees more than the local latitude in winter. More complicated deployments involve motor-driven tracking systems that continually reorient the panels to follow the daily and seasonal movements of the Sun. Such systems are justified only for large-scale utility generation using high-efficiency concentrator solar cells with lenses or parabolic mirrors that can intensify solar radiation a hundredfold or more.
Although sunlight is free, the cost of materials and available space must be considered in designing a solar system; less-efficient solar panels imply more panels, occupying more space, in order to produce the same amount of electricity. Compromises between cost of materials and efficiency are particularly evident for space-based solar systems. Panels used on satellites have to be extra-rugged, reliable, and resistant to radiation damage encountered in Earth’s upper atmosphere. In addition, minimizing the liftoff weight of these panels is more critical than fabrication costs. Another factor in solar panel design is the ability to fabricate cells in “thin-film” form on a variety of substrates, such as glass, ceramic, and plastic, for more flexible deployment. Amorphous silicon is very attractive from this viewpoint. In particular, amorphous silicon-coated roof tiles and other photovoltaic materials have been introduced in architectural design and for recreational vehicles, boats, and automobiles.
Development of solar cells
The development of solar cell technology stems from the work of French physicist Antoine-César Becquerel in 1839. Becquerel discovered the photovoltaic effect while experimenting with a solid electrode in an electrolyte solution; he observed that voltage developed when light fell upon the electrode. About 50 years later, Charles Fritts constructed the first true solar cells using junctions formed by coating the semiconductor selenium with an ultrathin, nearly transparent layer of gold. Fritts’s devices were very inefficient converters of energy; they transformed less than 1 percent of absorbed light energy into electrical energy. Though inefficient by today’s standards, these early solar cells fostered among some a vision of abundant, clean power. In 1891 R. Appleyard wrote of
the blessed vision of the Sun, no longer pouring his energies unrequited into space, but by means of photo-electric cells…, these powers gathered into electrical storehouses to the total extinction of steam engines, and the utter repression of smoke.
By 1927 another metal-semiconductor-junction solar cell, in this case made of copper and the semiconductor copper oxide, had been demonstrated. By the 1930s both the selenium cell and the copper oxide cell were being employed in light-sensitive devices, such as photometers, for use in photography. These early solar cells, however, still had energy-conversion efficiencies of less than 1 percent. This impasse was finally overcome with the development of the silicon solar cell by Russell Ohl in 1941. Thirteen years later, aided by the rapid commercialization of silicon technology needed to fabricate the transistor, three other American researchers—Gerald Pearson, Daryl Chapin, and Calvin Fuller—demonstrated a silicon solar cell capable of a 6 percent energy-conversion efficiency when used in direct sunlight. By the late 1980s silicon cells, as well as cells made of gallium arsenide, with efficiencies of more than 20 percent had been fabricated. In 1989 a concentrator solar cell in which sunlight was concentrated onto the cell surface by means of lenses achieved an efficiency of 37 percent owing to the increased intensity of the collected energy. By connecting cells of different semiconductors optically and electrically in series, even higher efficiencies are possible, but at increased cost and added complexity. In general, solar cells of widely varying efficiencies and cost are now available.
Stephen Joseph Fonash Raymond T. Fonash S. Ashok