Photovoltaic array

Solar panels are devices that convert light into electricity. They are called solar after the sun or "Sol" because the sun is the most powerful source of the light available for use. They are sometimes called photovoltaics which means "light-electricity". Solar cells or PV cells rely on the photovoltaic effect to absorb the energy of the sun and cause current to flow between two oppositely charge layers. The most common use for solar panels are for spacecrafts, including all NASA spacecraft that orbit the Earth and Mars and spacecraft that are going to nearby comets or asteroids.

Crystalline silicon and gallium arsenide are typical choices of materials for solar panels. Gallium arsenide crystals are grown especially for photovoltaic use, but silicon crystals are available in less-expensive standard ingots, which are produced mainly for consumption in the microelectronics industry.

When exposed to direct sunlight at 1 AU, a 6-centimeter diameter silicon cell can produce a current of about 0.5 ampere at 0.5 volt. Gallium arsenide is more efficient. Crystalline ingots are sliced into wafer-thin disks, polished to remove slicing damage, dopants are introduced into the wafers, and metallic conductors are deposited onto each surface: a thin grid on the sun-facing side and usually a flat sheet on the other. Spacecraft solar panels are constructed of these cells cut into appropriate shapes, protected from radiation and handling damage on the front surface by bonding on a cover glass, and cemented onto a substrate (either a rigid panel or a flexible blanket), and electrical connections are made in series-parallel to determine total output voltage. The cement and the substrate must be thermally conductive, because in flight the cells tend to heat up from absorbing infrared energy that is not converted to electricity. Since cell heating reduces the operating efficiency it is desirable to minimize the heating. The substrate is supported on a deployable structural framework. The resulting assemblies are called solar panels or solar arrays.

A solar panel is a collection of solar cells. Although each solar cell provides a relatively small amount of power, many solar cells spread over a large area can provide enough power to be useful. To get the most power, solar panels have to be pointed directly at the Sun. Spacecraft are built so that the solar panels can be pivoted as the spacecraft moves. Thus, they can always stay in the direct path of the light rays no matter how the spacecraft is pointed. Spacecraft are usually designed with solar panels that can always be pointed at the Sun, even as the rest of the body of the spacecraft moves around, much as a tank turret can be aimed independently of where the tank is going. A tracking mechanism is often incorporated into the solar arrays to keep the array pointed towards the sun.

Solar panels need to have a lot of surface area that can be pointed towards the Sun as the spacecraft moves. More exposed surface area means more electricity can be converted from light energy from the Sun. Sometimes, satellite scientists purposefully orient the solar panels to "off point," or out of direct alignment from the Sun. This happens if the batteries are completely charged and the amount of electricity needed is lower than the amount of electricity made. The extra power will just be vented by a shunt into space as heat.

To date, solar power has been practical for spacecraft operating no farther from the sun than the orbit of Mars. For example, Magellan, Mars Global Surveyor, and Mars Observer used solar power as did the Earth-orbiting, Hubble Space Telescope. For future missions, it is desirable to reduce solar array mass, and to increase the power generated per unit area. This will reduce overall spacecraft mass, and may make the operation of solar-powered spacecraft feasible at larger distances from the sun.

Solar array mass could be reduced with thin-film photovoltaic cells, flexible blanket substrates, and composite support structures. Solar array efficiency could be improved by using new photovoltaic cell materials and solar concentrators that intensify the incident sunlight.

Photovoltaic concentrator solar arrays for primary spacecraft power are devices, which intensify the sunlight on the photovoltaics. This design uses lenses, called Fresnel lenses, which take a large area of sunlight and direct it towards a specific spot by bending the rays of light and focusing them. Some people use the same principle when they use a magnifying lens to focus the Sun's rays on a pile of kindling or paper to start fires.

Solar concentrators put one of these lenses over every solar cell. This focuses light from the large concentrator area down to the smaller cell area. This allows the quantity of expensive solar cells to be reduced by the amount of concentration. Concentrators work best when there is a single source of light and the concentrator can be pointed right at it. This is ideal in space, where the Sun is a single light source. Solar cells are the most expensive part of solar arrays, and arrays are often a very expensive part of the spacecraft. This technology allows costs to be cut significantly due to the utilization of less material.