Solar energy Bright days for Solar What is solar energy? Types of solar energy Components of solar cells The effect and problems facing solar cell components The effect and advantages of solar cells The advantages of solar energy The disadvantages of solar energy Observations and conclusions References

What is solar energy? Solar energy can be captured by solar panels. Solar power is obtained from sunlight through solar panels, which converts the energy in sunlight into electricity

Types of solar energy There are 2 main types of solar panels which uses complete different technologies to make use of the energy from the sun: Solar Water Heating collectors: These panels absorbs the energy from the sun and transfer it to heat water. Photovoltaic or solar electric panels: These panels transform the solar radiation directly into electricity.

Components of solar cells Semiconductor-based components in solar cells are mostly made up of Silicon, which is a lousy material for solar cells, because it doesn‘t absorb light as well as some other semiconductors, that converts light into electricity in solar panel. A relatively thick slab of Silicon is needed to generate useful amount of electricity.

The effect and problems facing solar cell components Silicon frees electrons, when it absorbs energy through light. They can be trapped by defects and impurities in the material. It must be made as defect free and pure as possible, which is an expensive preposition. Solar panels which converts the energy in sunlight into electricity, are so expensive and inefficient that they now produce just a fraction of 1 percent of the world‘s power. The Chip industry spends $1,000 per gram on clean manufacturing processes to keep it‘s silicon pure. Solar-cell companies are limited to less than a dollar per gram.

The effect and advantages of solar cells Silicons are extremely abundant, second only to oxygen in the earth‘s crust. Solar cells performs better under concentrated light, converting a higher percentage of photons into electricty.

The advantages of solar energy It is economical The potential of solar power is enormous, in just over one hour, it could supply enough energy from the sun,to reach the earth to meet the world‘s needs for an entire year

The disadvantages of solar energy It is expensive to build a solar system It involves lots of time Even if solar panels become extremely cheap and efficient, they still have a problem: they reach their peak power output for only a few hours a day and don't work at all at night.

Observations and conclusions By focusing on ways to minimize the impact of impurities, manufacturers would have to consider making solar cells out of cheaper, dirtier silicon. And cheaper raw materials combined with greater production capacity would put solar power in a better position to become a major source of electricity. Also by developing ways to use sunlight to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, electricity can be generated in a fuel cell recombination. Solar power can be made cheap as power from coal through the use of Organic light –emitt diodes as pixels and also the use of curved lenses can gather sunlight from a large area and direct it to a small solar cell, enabling a fraction as much semi conductor materials to absorb the same amount of light.

References Kevin Bullis,. (2008,September/October ). Bright Days for Solar New investment fuels promising energy research at MIT. Technology review, SM 05. Retrieved December 10, 2009, from http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=21179&ch=specialsections&sc=solar&pg=1