Solar Connect Company866 16th St E, North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

We focus on projects in British Columbia, Canada. Our team is equipped with the qualifications and insurance to properly complete your solar energy project.

How Solar Electricity Works

Light hits a solar PV panel and it releases electrons that we use in our homes as electricity.  The driving force to power PVs comes from the sun.  The rate at which the surface of the Earth receives solar energy is about 6,000 times our total energy demand.  A photovoltaic material is capable of converting the energy contained in photons of light into an electrical voltage and current.  A photon with high enough energy will cause an electron in a photovoltaic material to break free of the atom that holds it.  If an electric field is provided, those electrons are swept toward a metallic contact and moved through a wire as electric current.

Different Solar PV Materials

The most efficient and durable solar PV material is monocrystalline silicon (Mono-Si).    Solar PV panels use semiconductor materials to convert sunlight into electricity.  The technology for doing so is closely related to the solid-state technologies used to make transistors, diodes and all other semiconductors devices.  In fact, the starting point for most of the world’s PV devices is silicon.  Other semiconductor materials, like Copper Indium Gallium Selenide (CIGS), Gallium Arsenide (GaAs), and Cadmium Telluride (CaTe), are also used in PVs.  Compared to silicon, these other materials have some significant disadvantages including being more expensive, and in some cases, toxic to humans. 

Solar Panel Specification Sheet

 Also called datasheets, these are extremely important in the engineering and design of a system.  Depending on how interested you are in solar energy you may have checked out various solar PV panel specifications sheets.