E – 1744 Photovoltaic Fundamentals

The production of a small amount of current by certain solid compounds when exposed to light was first discovered in the 1840’s.  With the space race, photovoltaics developed into an exotic technology used almost exclusively on satellites in space. Now photovoltaic technology has developed into rapidly expanding energy markets. This course briefly accounts the history of using photovoltaics for solar energy generation, and describes the general scientific characteristics of photovoltaic (PV) technology including the physical laws that govern its ability to convert sunlight into electricity, and the materials and molecular structures used to construct solar cells. This course also outlines a variety of solar module configurations (arrays), comparing their capacities in different applications; and briefly describes solar storage devices such as batteries.  This course is based on the publication Photovoltaic Fundamentals.