Solar Photovoltaic Cells Types & Properties

All of us know that solar photovoltaic cell is a device that converts solar energy to electricity. Also we know that solar cells are integrated together to produce the module and modules are integrated together to produce panels and at the end panels are integrated together to produce the array which represents the final shape of the solar photovoltaic plant that generate electricity to you.

Solar cell is the essential unit of solar photovoltaic system, so you should care about its type and characteristics. The question is If you go around the market, what kind of solar cell you find and what is the pros and cons of each type, let us simply know the answer.

At the market you will find two popular types of solar photovoltaic cell:

Type one: Silicon Wafer also called crystalline silicon cells which represent nearly 93 % of the solar photovoltaic cells present in the market; it is the most famous type. This type is actually categorized into mono crystalline type and poly crystalline type.

Type two: Thin Film which represents nearly 7 % of the solar photovoltaic cells present in the market, this type categorized into amorphous silicon cells (4.2%), cadmium telluride (Cd Te 1 %) cells and copper indium compound cells (CIS 0.7 %).

Now let us now the differences between the main three types:  mono crystalline silicon, poly crystalline silicon and thin film (amorphous):

comparison	Mono crystalline	Poly crystalline	Thin film(amorphous):
Size ratio	Up to 170 w/m2	Up to 150 w/m2	Up to 80 w/m2
Efficiency	Up to 19%	Up to 18%	Up to 10%
life	Long (25 years)	Long (25 years)	short (10 years)
Performance In bad weather	Outstanding performance in cooler weather	Slightly better performance in hotter weather	Outstanding performance in hotter weather and less effective in cooler weather
Common use & Cost	Most commonly used	Less expensive that mono	Cheaper than mono & poly.

The selection of solar photovoltaic cell type is a key actor you should care about when you construct anew solar photovoltaic plant to generate electricity. You should select the most propitiate type according to your load wattage, solar photovoltaic system cost and the environmental condition.  

Design On grid Solar Photovoltaic at your home to Generate Electricity

Question, can we generate electricity locally at our homes and sell it to the electricity company? Is this is a good investment project I can do? The answer is yes off course you can do it….. That is done by construction on grid photo voltaic system at the roof of your home.

Most of people that construct on grid photo voltaic system aiming from that are to gain good monthly income from the electricity company under the popular regulation present in almost countries all over the world which called Feed in Tariff. There are two factors affecting your success in installing excellent and reliable on grid photo voltaic system to generate electricity and harvest good monthly income one of them is the good design and the other is the good selection of on grid photo voltaic system components to be according to specification.    

Kindly let me tell you a brief on how can the specialized solar photo voltaic engineers design on grid photo voltaic system in a simple way :

First: we will ask home owner about electricity bills for the previous 2 years to indicate the average monthly electricity consumption and also ask him about his budget.  

Second: we start to go to the roof area to indicate its characteristics by identifying the usable area that is suitable for installing the photovoltaic system (eliminating spaces of local and horizontal shadow) and indicting the roof azimuth and tilt angle which related to the good facing to the sun to get maximum electricity harvest.

Third: we select a photo voltaic modules type and manufacture from many various manufacturers present all over the world and racking system if needed. By knowing the size of module and racking system I will indicate the maximum number of modules I can installing at the roof and consequently the maximum electrical power I can gain from the array.

Fourth: by indicating the array max electrical power we can get the rated power of the inverter we will install.

 Fifth: by using software or by some calculation we indicate number of array strings and maximum /minimum number of modules in each string.

Sixth: by knowing the sun hours in the city and in my specific roof under design I can calculate the electricity that can be harvested each month then I will do my feasibility study introducing it to the home owner.

It's an effective and guaranteed project to generate electricity and sell it to Electricity Company by constructing on grid photo voltaic system … I am in help to my colleagues , any home owner or anew electrical engineer . all of your inquires are welcome …..