Graphic credit: Photovoltaic Education Network
For those wanting to know more about solar power and how we obtain energy from the sun, this information from the Photovoltaic Education Network will prove to be of immense use.
Created by Christiana Honsberg and Stuart Bowden, who work at the Solar Power Labs at Arizona State University, they introduce their website with a poignant description of photovoltaics as:
“…a most elegant energy source. Light shines on a crystal and produces electricity. It’s as simple as that. There are no moving parts. The fuel source (sunlight) is free, abundant and widely distributed, available to every country and person in the world. At over 165,000 TW the solar resource dwarfs the world’s current power usage of 16 TW or even our projected future usage of 60 TW.”
The authors describe their site, which was partially funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation, as an e-book on PV – a project that evolved from how it was initially distributed via CDs yet still maintains its “ungainly title of PVCDROM.”
Here are the contents:
As important as anything else on this site is an invitation to participate in the site and provide improvements. They write:
“Help us improve the PVCDROM. If you find any errors or have suggestions please post to the forums. Clicking on the Discuss link at the end of each page takes you to the forum discussion for that page. Alternatively, send an email to pvcdrom@pveducation.org.”
For anyone wanting to know more about solar energy and how PV panels work, this is a remarkably comprehensive place to visit.
And a special thanks to Chittaluru Akil and Jesse Williams whose comments on another post about how PV works introduced me to this site.
PHOTO: Photovoltaic Education Network
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Former Tesla Battery Expert Leading Lyten Into New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Era — Podcast:
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
