diy solar
NASA estimated that the Sun gives or irradiates the earth 174 Petawatts (Pw) of solar energy every day. Out of this approximately 30% of energy is reflected back to space, and another major share is absorbed by our atmosphere. Even if we get only 10% of this energy which is about 17.4 Pw per day, it is still more than the whole daily energy requirement worldwide.
If this much energy is freely available then why there are energy crisis. The answer is that we are not able to canalize fully all this energy to meet our requirements. Most Solar Cells which are available in the market are quite expensive to be accessible to our purchase power. But now we have an option of DIY Solar Panels. You need some good instructions and simple materials. By building your own DIY Solar Panels with patience and dedication you will start saving in energy bills and generates your own electricity.
Science behind the Working of your DIY Solar Panels:
Our DIY Solar Panels have photovoltaic cells or Solar Cells which are arranged in a grid-like pattern on its surface. Solar cells are made of special materials such as silicon. When the solar energy falls on our DIY Solar Panels, this energy knocks electrons loose and allows them to flow freely. The solar cells have the electric field that makes the loose electrons to flow in certain direction, which is a current. To draw this current off for external use we place metal contacts on the top and bottom of our solar cell.
This is the basic process. But to understand it better let’s consider one example of solar cell: the single-crystal silicon cell.
Silicon in its crystalline form has some special chemical properties. One single atom of silicon has 14 electrons which are arranged in three different shells. The first two inner shells which are closest to the center or nucleus are completely full. The outer shell has only four electrons. The outer shell is short of four electrons; therefore a silicon atom will always look for ways to fill up its last shell. For completing its outer shell, it will share the four electrons with its adjacent silicon atoms. This forms the crystalline structure. This was the description of pure crystalline silicon, which is a poor conductor of electricity. It means all the electrons are completely locked.
Solar cells have the silicon but with impurities and these impurities are actually put there for making it more conducting. Let’s think about an atom of silicon with that of phosphorous which has five electrons in its outer shell. When it bonds with its neighboring silicon atoms, there is one electron in phosphorous which is free. When energy or heat is added to it, most of these electrons go free, and hence we have a lot of free carriers. The process of adding impurities is called doping. When silicon atom is doped with phosphorous, then the resulting silicon which we get is called N-type (“n” for negative) because of the dominance of free electrons.
In fact, by this we got an N-type part of our solar cell. To get the other part silicon atom is doped with boron, which has three electrons instead of four in its outer shell, to turn into P-type silicon. In this P-type silicon (“p” for positive) we have free holes.
When we put N-type silicon together with P-type silicon, the free electrons from the N side, which requires holes to fall into, found the free holes on the P side, and they rush to fill them in. This completes the electric field, which makes our solar cell work.
Ralph Somers, Editor
DIY Solar Panels Information Portal
YouTube DIY Solar Panels Videos.
DIY Solar Panels – ‘Finally Revealed’ Step by Step DIY Instructions to Build Your Own Solar Panels
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