Solar power

Solar power

Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV), or indirectly using concentrated solar power (CSP). Concentrated solar power systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. Photovoltaics convert light into electric current using the photoelectric effect.

Industry: Energy

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Solar power

p-type semiconductor

Energy; Solar power

A semiconductor in which holes carry the current; produced by doping an intrinsic semiconductor with an electron acceptor impurity (e.g., boron in silicon).

band gap

Energy; Solar power

In a semiconductor, the energy difference between the highest valence band and the lowest conduction band.

pulse-width-modulated (PWM) wave inverter

Energy; Solar power

A type of power inverter that produce a high quality (nearly sinusoidal) voltage, at minimum current harmonics.

band gap energy (eg)

Energy; Solar power

The amount of energy (in electron volts) required to free an outer shell electron from its orbit about the nucleus to a free state, and thus promote it from the valence to the conduction level.