Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Zeke Yewdall
& Sam Ley
Courtesy www.recgroup.com
may seem like magic. But what may
appear as a bit of sorcery actually
boils down to uniting science and
engineering wizardry with some of
Earths most abundant resources Polycrystalline silicon, ready to be manufactured into
photovoltaic cells.
sunshine and silicon.
Photovoltaic (PV) cells are made of a special class of
materials called semiconductors. Of all the semiconductor
14 materials, silicon is most commonly used because of its
Electron Flow:
Extra Electrons Through circuit, from N-layer to P-layer
N-Layer:
Phosphorus doped;
extra electrons create Free Electrons:
negative charge Pile up in N-layer and can
only move to P-layer
through circuit
Boron Atom: 3 electrons in outer shell. Shares with silicon atoms to form Electron: Knocked around by energy of sunlight; moves through circuit
a crystal bond of 7 electrons and 1 hole, readily attracting extra electrons. from N-layer to P-layer.
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photovoltaic effect
Electrons & Efficiency
One way to think about the process of electron movement is
to imagine that the P-layer is a pool filled with electrons and
your deck is the N-layer. If a sufficiently strong photon hits
one of the electrons in the pool (P-layer), it can kick it up onto
the deck (N-layer) where you can catch it and put it to useful
work. Ideally, every photon coming into the pool would
bump an electron up onto the deck that you could collect and
put to use. However, silicons limitations, along with design
challenges, prevent PV cells from being 100% efficient. In
reality, most commercially available cells are between 4% and
22% efficient at converting the energy in the photons to useful
electricity. Here are several reasons why:
Courtesy www.solarworld-ca.com
Too Little or Too Much Energy. The light that hits a cell
contains photons with a wide range of energies, but a PV
cell will only respond to certain energies, or wavelengths.
The required level of photon energy to activate an electron
is referred to as the band gap. Different types of photovoltaic
om
olar.c
the negative side of the cell and re-entering the cell through
dvents
the positive side.
ww.a
PV modules are made by connecting numerous cells in
esy w
series, parallel, or series/parallel to achieve useful levels of
Court
voltage and current. These cell networks include positive and
negative wiring terminals so we can channel the electricity
generated to our uses. As long as sunlight is coming in, the
electrons will keep flowing and can deliver electrical energy
to a load thats connected to the circuit.
R&D technicians inspect a monocrystalline wafer Amorphous silicon has a similar problem
at a Suntech Power PV plant in China. called hydrogen diffusion. Instead of being a
solid silicon crystal, it has all kinds of loose
hydrogen atoms, which function like a deck
full of gaps. Also, electrons in a position to
be bumped by photons are fewer and farther
between because the hydrogen leaves less
silicon to hit. The hydrogen atoms are the
reason that amorphous silicon decreases in
efficiency over the first few months before
stabilizing: Hydrogen in the atmosphere
slowly diffuses into the module.
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67
photovoltaic effect
Because silicon is a semiconductor, its not nearly as The Reality of Efficiency
good as a metal for transporting electrical energy. Its internal After all this talk about efficiency, you might be surprised to
resistance is fairly high, and high resistance means high losses. discover that buying the most efficient module on the market
To minimize these losses, a cell is covered by a metallic contact shouldnt be your only goal. When youre talking about
grid that shortens the distance that electrons have to travel from energy production, its watts that were really after. If a less
one side of the cell to the other while covering only a small part efficient PV module allows us to get those same watts for
of the cell surface. We could cover the bottom with a metal, less cost, it may be a more cost-efficient choice than a more
allowing for good conduction, but if we completely cover the efficient, but more expensive, module.
top too, photons cant get through the opaque conductor and If you have limited space on your roof or a small solar
we lose all of our energy. If we put our contacts only at the window, using more efficient modules can often make sense.
sides of our cell, the electrons have to travel an extremely long But if you have acres of warehouse roof, for example, it may
distance (for an electron) to reach the contacts. not. It all depends on your particular situation. To optimize
Various solutions to this obstruction have been considered, your investment, prioritize cost per installed kilowatt-hour,
from BP Solars laser-grooved buried-grid modules that put longevity, and efficiency, in that order, if space is not a
the collection grid in trenches instead of using flat ribbons consideration.
on the surface, to placing the metal contacts on the back
surface of the cell (as on SunPower modules), to transparent Access
conducting layers that are being used for some amorphous Zeke Yewdall (zeke@cosunflower.com) is chief engineer
and organic PV materials. at Sunflower Solar, a PV design/install company in Boulder,
Temperature also affects a cells efficiency. Typically, for Colorado.
each degree centigrade increase in operating temperature
Sam Ley (sam@cosunflower.com) is a physicist who works
over its rated temperature, a PV cell loses about 0.5% of its
at Sunflower Solar, and has extensive experience in science
specified power. For example, a PV module that experiences
education at museums.
temperatures 50C higher than its rated temperature (which
is quite common for rooftop modules) may produce 25% Portions of this article were adapted from Scott Aldouss
less than its rated power. This happens because the thermal article, How Solar Cells Work, courtesy 2007
energy is distributed unevenly, with some electrons having HowStuffWorks.com.
enough energy to go the wrong wayback across the
barrier, where they fall into holes we dont want them to.