Starters

The earth receives more energy from the sun in just one hour than the world uses in a whole year.

How exciting is that. Just look at the vast resources we have available for us. It is up to us to innovate and come up with products which will make it economically viable to exploit this abundant form of energy.

At a very high level there are two forms of technology for Solar Energy usage.

The two main categories of technology are defined by the choice of the semiconductor: either crystalline silicon in a wafer form or thin films of other materials.
The Crystalline Silicon is the main technology today with almost 90% of the market whereas the Thin Films market forms the rest. The latter is cheaper but efficiencies are low. Efficiencies of the Solar are still quite low hovering around 10-16%.

Three key elements in a solar cell form the basis of their manufacturing technology.

The first is the semiconductor, which absorbs light and converts it into electron-hole pairs.
The second is the semiconductor junction, which separates the photo-generated carriers (electrons and holes), and
The third is the contacts on the front and back of the cell that allow the current to flow to the external circuit.

Moving forward we will explore each technology in depth and also look at companies which are in the market for the same.