Solar power

The conversion of sunlight for electricity production can be performed by two main technologies:

Solar thermal systems: Solar Thermal Energy, also known as Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) technology, is produced using concentrating solar radiation technologies.

These systems use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam. The concentrated heat is then used as a heat source for a conventional power plant.

The most common techonologies in this category are parabolic trough collectors, solar power towers, Dish Stirling and Fresnel collectors.

Photovoltaics: A solar cell, or photovoltaic cell (PV), is a device that converts light into electric current using the photoelectric effect, according to which electrons are emitted from semiconductors as a consequence of their absorption of energy from electromagnetic radiation of very short wavelength.

There are three main types of PV:

• Monocrystalline – high performance solar cells
• Pollycrystalline – consisting of small silicon crystals. more easy to be manufactured, good performance

• Amorphous (thin film) – can be deposited in thin films at low temperatures onto a variety of substrates, low cost and lower performance