Solar cell

This page is under construction!!!

Intro

A solar cell is a complex device with many details under the hood. Studying a solar cell, optimizing the efficiency is high tech.

Deep Basics

The energy emerging from a solar cell is an effect which can be described with quantum mechanics. This means that it is complicated!

There is a very good lecture course online: [1]

Important figures and ideas which can be discovered in this course are:

The integrated power delivered on the surface of the Earth is 100 mW/cm2

But only wavelength shorter than 1.1Ev are absorbed: so this means only 44 mW/cm2 is possible at best. Why not "all" energy can be used is a quantum effect: this has to do with discontinuity in absorbing energy. Electrons, which catch the energy or send it out again do this in "jumps", not in a nice variable way.

Irradiance

Irradiance is the power delivered at a certin spot of the world at a certain time of year. This is the maximum of the possible energy to be harvested from a solar cell. Tables can be found at this page: http://solarelectricityhandbook.com/solar-irradiance.html

MPPT relation

The second lecture: [2] teaches the mechanisms behind the MPPT relation.