Homebrewed Electricity > Solar

Making decent solar panels part 1

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oztules:
Radar,
As best as I can recall, you need to do a little of quantum mechanics to understand the why for how light transmission through objects works.

Simply put, all matter is made up of mostly nothing. The proton in a hydrogen atom if viewed as the size of a basket ball, would see the electron cloud some 20 miles away..... it really is hard to hit something if your just passing through.

If the energy of a wavelength of light does not match exactly with one of the quanta levels of the outer electron shell/s of the substrate (glass in this case), it will in all likely hood pass straight through, and miss the nuclei and everything in the glass.

However, if the energy level of the wavelength matches one of the quanta levels that the outer electron layers can absorb/use, it will be absorbed, and then the energy re transmitted as color etc... and the  energy level falls back to "normal". In this case, the wavelength was intercepted, and the photon did not pass through, and so the substrate was not transparent to this wavelength, but in fact interacted with it instead.

An example would be normal sunlight passes straight through glass, but the higher energy wavelengths (ultraviolet and up) have an energy level that will interact with the glass atoms, and so in practice it is hard to get sunburned behind glass, as compared to no glass... To UV the glass is not seen as transparent.

The iron atoms in the glass alter the energy levels of the  shared electron shell/s it is involved with and so  can now  intercept some of the useful wavelengths and so steals some energy that would otherwise have passed through the glass into the solar cell itself.

Thats what transparency is, and why  photons with a wavelength in the white light spectrum can pass through the window and show you whats outside.


well, thats as I understood it from years ago.....



...................oztules

Edit: Conntaxman, my home made panels have made around 6000000whours (6MWH) in the last 12 months. Home brew panels can indeed work.

AcWxRADAR:
Oztoules,

Well understood.  I was correct in my assumption that it had to deal with the "transparency" of the glass for specific wavelengths.  However, I had never heard of Fe free glass.  I  have, of course, heard of leaded glass, but not much more on the subject than that.  So basically, any impurities in the glass, Fe, Pb etc would not be desired and the ideal glass for PV panels would be impurity free.  That has to be an art and a science in itself to create the protective glass to optimal optical standards AND THEN make it strong (impact resistant) as well!  I am sure that you must give up one thing for another in this endeavor.

Thanks for the knowledge, hoping to learn some more!  :)

RADAR

JW:
The topic should be sticky now, let me know

vpdavid:
Thanks for these technical implication of solar creation, I had never thought that it could be possible to understand for me.

oztules:
This is a simplified rendition of what happens and will do for having a working theory for explaining the results you will see in the real world.

It is not however a proper explanation of the quantum mechanics that actually happen... it is way too counter intuitive and complex to bother with in this circumstance...... eg an atom of hydrogen is best explained  as  being a proton with a electron in orbit around it... it will do for most purposes, but is so far from the truth as to be laughable really.... but that picture is what we are told unless we need to know one hell of a lot more.... and that requires virtual particles, and a whole lot of unbelievable things going on all at once.

It will do for the time being though.

......oztules

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