What are solar panels made of and what are there advantages and disadvantages?

Question

What are solar panels made of and what are there advantages and disadvantages?

Answer 1

traditional rigid solar panels (photovoltaic or PV panels) are made of silicon, although there are several different forms of silicon (single crystal, polysilicon, amorphous) that are used in different types of them.  Additionally, new types of PV devices are being developed, including flexible panels where a thin layer of silicon is used of a flexible substrate, and non silicon PV's such as copper indium diselenide and cadmium telluride.  Solar panels produce pollution free electricity from the sun - big advantage.  However, they are expensive to purchase, can be somewhat fragile (hail damage?), have relatively low efficiencies and their production process generates pollution to make them in the first place - disadvantages.

Answer 2

They're made of wafers of crystalline silicon, and attached wires.

They make pollution free electricity.

Dis- not so good under cloudy skies, expensive.

Answer 3

Earth-bound systems are made of crystaline silicon wafers, which are grown into cylinders and sliced to make cells these are pretty cheap.. but there are some panels made of gallium arsenide and mixed with clear plastic to enhance the sun rays... more expensive but you get more juice... this is what they use for orbiting satellites

Answer 4

The 'cells' themselves (the dark shiny blue things) are made with  compounds of silicon. Solar cells are cool, but they are still fairly expensive for the output they provide. If you have lots of $$$ you can actually buy enough capacity to run your home. Actually, you'd run the house off batteries and use the cells to charge the batteries. The DC current provided by the solar cells has to be 'inverted' to AC power, and that too, incurs loss (heat, etc)

Answer 5

Solar cells are semiconductor devices. That are several kinds, silicon and gallium arsenide and thin film and others. But they are all semiconductors of some kind, like computer chips. Advantage is they make power without moving parts as long as it is sunny. Disadvantage is high cost to make the cells and the fact that they make no power at night and less power on cloudy days.