What is Solar Energy?
It’s pretty difficult these days to pay attention to the news or the media and not hear about solar energy in some form. Yet while the term is thrown about more and more, and while an increasing amount of people are opting to utilize this kind of energy to light and heat their lives, not everyone knows what solar energy really is.
So read on if you want to find out: "What is solar energy all about?"
Narrowing Down the Definition
When people speak about solar energy these days, they are mostly talking about producing electricity by utilizing Photovoltaic panels- which are more commonly known as PV panels or solar panels. But solar electricity isn’t the sum total of what solar energy means.
Solar energy also refers to the heat and light that’s produced by the sun’s rays, and this is the primary way that solar energy has been utilized over the course of human history. We’ve depended on the heat and light of the sun for a long time, and many traditional cultures actually optimized the placement and design of their buildings to not only maximize their exposure to light during the day, but also to minimize the amount of solar heat that their homes lost at night. Yet for most purposes, solar energy refers to PV panels.
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The Photovoltaic Effect
The PV effect, which is the principle by which solar panels produce energy, has actually been known about and experimented with for hundreds of years. In fact, the first development of what can be considered solar panel technology occurred at the end of the 19th century!
However, those early experiments with solar energy were considerably less effective at producing electricity than what we can produce with modern solar panels. In fact, those first experiments were only less than 1 percent efficient at converting solar energy, while modern solar panels are nearing 29 percent efficient at conversion.
How Solar Energy Works
The PV effect is actually pretty simple. Essentially, solar panels contain materials that are reactive to solar rays (crystalline silicon). When sunlight hits these materials, they produce reactions that are then converted to an electrical current, which lead through the solar panel and down to either a battery or an electrical grid.
Obviously this isn’t the most scientific manner of describing the process, but it gets to the essence of the PV effect. Solar panels are designed and arranged in an efficient way to maximize the amount of reactive material on each panel (and to also multiply the reactions of the material) and to effectively transmit the electrical current while losing as little of it as possible.
Each solar panel is composed of a number of individual solar cells, which are not able to produce enough energy for most applications on their own. But when combined strategically into panels, and when they panels are utilized in large quantities, solar energy is effective enough to power entire cities. In fact, solar energy is so abundant and solar panels have become so efficient, that it’s estimated well less than 1% of all of the sun’s energy in the Sahara could power the entire continent of Europe. If you want to know more about making solar panels why not check out our reviews of the guides available on the internet. Read our Earth4energy review or our GreenDIYenergy review and see what you think.