It’s all the rage today to have solar panels installed to heat water for your geyser or to heat the water in your pool, but wait , how many individuals actually know how the technology behind solar panels works? Very few I am sure. If you are one of those people and also have a hunger for knowledge, read on.
Solar panels use the power of the sun to cause a similar process as that in chemical batteries. This procedure is the free flow of electrons.
The standard element in solar panels is silicon. Silicon is an excellent platform for transferring electrons once it has been purified. Natural silicon atoms carry four electrons, but have space for yet another four. The plates of solar panels are made of this natural type of silicon. The plates have got a neutral charge when they are by themselves since each silicon atom requires eight electrons in total to have a charge. This means that they must be combined with other elements that do have a positive or negative charge.
For electricity to actually flow, you’ll need both a positive and negative charge. Phosphorus is normally combined with the silicon to create the negative plate and boron to create the positive plate. The plates are thencoupled together with wires that are good at conducting electrical energy to form one panel made of a positive plus a negative half.
The completed panels are placed at a certain angle (negative on top) to seize the photons produced by the sun’s rays. These photons introduce energy into the negative plate. Once sufficient energy has been added, the extra electron which made the silicon-phosphorus combination negative breaks clear. The electron is pulled into the outer band of the silicon-boron combination. This process releases the power added by the photons and this power is converted to electrical energy as soon as it is harnessed by the conductive wire connections between the plates.
Although only one escaping electron will never generate much electricity, the shared effort of millions of them packed into the plate can power a modest engine. Having said that, the angle of the plate has to be just right or you will never get the most out of it, productivity can be cut in half by just a slight movement.
Solar panels usually do not produce much electrical energy, but any excess that there may be could be kept in a battery and stored for a rainy day (quite literally in this case). The bigger the solar panels, the more electricity they will produce. Science is constantly progressing and trying to help make them more successful. Sooner or later it may be attainable to power a racing car with a solar panel the dimensions of an A4 piece of paper. Picture having entire towns using the electricity created by only a city block or two of solar panels as an alternative of having a roof coated in the panels for each household!
Solar panels also save you a good deal of money on power bills and will recoup their cost in a few short years, where after you will have free electricity. Amazing, is it not?