Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas have been used as energy sources for many years in the world. However, fossil fuels have polluted the nature and have gradually become extinct. Scientists who focus on alternative and renewable energy types; They investigated the use of energy types such as wind, solar, geothermal energy and created many new energy generation systems, especially solar panels. Although everyone approves the use of solar panels and their areas of use increase day by day, there are not many people who know exactly how the system works. So how can the solar panel, which you can even install on the roof of your home, generate energy with light, how does that energy turn into electricity? Let’s go step by step and look at the answer to the question together. What is a solar panel? As you can see in many films, documentaries or solar power plants called solar fields, solar panels are structures that are made up of many different cells, not one piece. The reason for the large number of cells side by side is that each one draws sunlight separately and the operation can continue even if a problem occurs in other cells. The photons present in the sun rays connect to the negative and positive sides of the cell as soon as they hit a cell in the solar panel and form an electrical circuit. You can think of this as plus and minus poles in conventional pen batteries. Electrons flow in the formed circuit and generate electricity. In each cell in the solar panel, this electricity generation process continues every second. A circuit system also occurs between the interconnected cells and the electricity generation area expands. In other words, the more cells connected, the more electricity will be produced. A solar panel of 30 cells can generate 3000 watts of electricity, which can meet all of the electrical energy of an average building. How does the solar panel generate electricity from light? Loose atoms of the photons in the sun rays scatter the moment they hit the cell. Consisting of semiconductor silicon batteries, electrons are attached to the positive and negative parts of the cell in the solar panel. Just like a pen battery, an electrical circuit is created. Sunlight with loose atoms completes the connection between these poles. However, the completed electric circuit generates electricity in the circuit direct current (DC). So it provides one-way current. In order to get more efficiency from direct current (DC) electricity and to expand its usage area, this electricity is converted to alternating current (AC). Alternating current (AC) is widely used in the world as it is transmitted much cheaper over long distances. So, how is DC electricity from the solar panel converted to AC? An inverter, that is, a converter, is used to convert electricity from solar panels producing electricity in direct current to alternating current. We can think of these inverters as the brains of the whole system. Not only does the current change; It also provides fault control with voltage, current, production, maximum and minimum power monitoring. In the early days when solar panels were used, a central inverter was used for an entire panel. It was a huge mistake to be the only transducer because the entire system was inoperable in cases where one cell malfunctioned, overshadowed or dusty. For some time, special converters have been used for each solar panel cell. Thus, even if one of the cells is damaged, the other cells continue to produce uninterrupted electricity. What about sunless hours and days? In the environment, there is no sun and sunlight, and the electricity obtained in bad weather and night conditions is backed up. In solar power plants called solar fields, excess electricity backed up to batteries with a large diameter is used in non-production time periods. In small-scale solar panel systems installed in houses, the same batteries have smaller ones. Excess electricity that is not used and stored can be sold to the network with an agreement made with the electricity network. Thus, many people can benefit from the renewable energy produced. Solar panel system, one of the most known and used among renewable energy sources, basically works like this. The technology of generating electricity through the solar panel is improving day by day. Maybe one day we can charge our mobile phones with a portable solar panel that we will add on our hat.
