Summary and Activities

Summary and Activities

This lesson intended to provide you with the key concepts and terminology on the photovoltaic light conversion. It covers the basics of the photovoltaic effect and physical phenomena behind it, although it does not go into the depth of the science, but rather focuses on the practical understanding. Materials in this lesson also provide explanation to how the performance of the solar systems - cells, modules, arrays - is measured. Now, you should have an idea what the main parameters of the solar cell performance are, how to obtain them, and interpret them. You have learned how some of the key environmental parameters, such as temperature, light intensity, etc., affect the PV cell performance. The question of combining PV cells into bigger systems is discussed and illustrated with some examples, and we will return to the analysis of the larger-scale solar systems in Lesson 6, when more details will be given.

References for Lesson 4