Question: What is the Principle of Photovoltaic Power Generation?
Answer: The basic principle of solar photovoltaic power generation is to directly convert solar energy into electrical energy using the photovoltaic effect of solar cells, that is, the photoelectric effect of semiconductors.
When sunlight strikes a metal or stone containing semiconductor materials such as silicon, the electrons in the silicon crystal turn into free electrons after absorbing the sunlight. When the energy absorbed by the electrons is large enough to overcome the internal gravity of the object, they do work, escape from the surface of the object and become photoelectrons.
When atoms with different numbers of outer electrons are doped into pure silicon, P-type semiconductors and N-type semiconductors can be created. When P-type and N-type are combined, the contact surface creates a potential difference, becoming a solar cell.
When sunlight hits the P-N junction, holes move from the P-polar region to the N-polar region and electrons move from the N-polar region to the P-polar region. At this point, current is generated and this is the principle of photovoltaic power generation.
It follows from this that N-type silicon and P-type silicon are in fact the basic components of solar photovoltaic panels. In practice, solar photovoltaic panels composed of N-type silicon and P-type silicon are installed in centralized or distributed solar power plants and become a small interceptor that collects sunlight and continuously supplies electrical energy.
Question: Do you understand the relationship between solar power generation and photovoltaic power generation?
Answer: There are actually two types of solar power generation, one is solar thermal power generation and the other is solar photovoltaic power generation. Solar thermal power generation is the process of converting solar energy into thermal energy through water or other devices and then converting the thermal energy into electrical energy to provide power, which is called solar thermal power generation.
Solar photovoltaic power generation is a power generation method that converts light energy directly into electrical energy without the need for thermal processes. These include photovoltaic power generation, photo-chemical power generation, photo-induced power generation and photobiological power generation.
Photovoltaic power generation can actually serve as a representative of solar photovoltaic power generation, and compared to solar thermal power generation, photovoltaic power generation devices are simpler.
In general, photovoltaic power generation, which is part of solar photovoltaic power generation, has more advantages over solar thermal power generation.