How solar panel works? In simple English | 5% for Sl-Charity

Have you ever wonder how does this strange looking black square plate absorb sunlight and make electricity? Is it a complicated science thing? Answer is no! You may need to know about electronics to understand the principle behind solar panels. But I am going to explain it with simple English. No electronics knowledge needed.

Solar panels are made from the most abundant material on the earth; sand. Not just sand, its 99.999% pure sand. We call it silicon. Blocks are made from these pure silicon and sliced into thin layers, we call it silicon wafers. There is a complicated process to make all this happen, but you don't need to know.

Now the fun part begins. Let's say this wafer is a bunch of humans. Now God enters the scene, take two wafers and make them girls and boys. How? God take one wafer and give those humans "Holes" ("Hole" is the actual scientific word). And now they are girls. Next God takes the other wafer and give those bunch of humans "Balls" (actual scientific word is "electrons". But let's use the word ball since it is easy to understand).

Now we have two kinds of human beings, Girls and Boys. Girls are with "holes" and boys are with "balls". They are in separate wafers. They are free to move anywhere inside their wafers. Just like single girls and single boys. Now we bring both girl wafers and boy wafers together. You know what happens when we put girls and boys next to each other, right? When we touch the wafers together girls in the border of the girl wafer and boys in border of boy wafer are attracted to each other. Border girls and border boys are in love and make couples. Now this region is covered with couples. You know what happens to couples? THEY DO NOT HAVE FREEDOM TO MOVE! These couples sit in this region without moving. We call it "depletion region". Guess what? All these things happens in the dark. So now one can see.

Now the sun comes up. Light enters the depletion region. When the light hits, those couples break apart and move in to their opposite borders (yup, they made love in complete secrecy in the night, when the sun is up they separate like nothing happened). There is a beautiful sinhala song explaining this scientific phenomenon. "හිරුගේ ලොවේදී අපි වෙන්වෙමූ... සදුගේ රැයේදී යලි හමුවෙමූ....". English translation is "We will depart when the sun is up... We will meet again when the moon is up...". Now both departed boys (balls) and girls(holes) move away and away from the depletion region and collected at the opposite borders. Small amount of couples stays in the depletion region because they are Married! (Yup, no freedom for them to move).

Depletion region is now thin. Both opposite borders are now densely populated. Now someone comes and make a road between these densely populated borders, making them free to move along the road. Boys (balls/electrons) travel along the road freely. They travel along the road to girls wafers, pass the depletion region since it is thin, comes to boys' wafer, then again go through the road. Girls do the same thing, but travelling in the opposite direction.

They travel continuously until the sun is there. When the sun goes down they move to depletion region and make couples again. They wait in the depletion region till the sun comes up again next day. They start to travel again. This travelling is the one we called "electric current".
Hundreds of these wafers are connected to each other and make a cell. We call it a solar cell. Solar panels are made from hundreds of these solar cells. Each solar cell makes only a small current. Hundreds of solar cell sums up to a large current.

That's my friends how a solar panel generate electric current. Please note that the explanation is not 100% scientifically accurate. I had to remove some parts to make it easy to understand.

So the summary of this post is "if you want your freedom, don't get married"