Abstract:
Photovoltaic (PV) power is produced from the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity. PV systems can be set up in any part of the world, and even with partial light a PV cell is able to produce electricity (Bond, 2000). By determining the electrical load for a home, a PV system can be designed to meet almost any power need (Strong and Scheller, 1993). Acid rain, greenhouse gas emissions, and radioactive waste are all by-products of producing electricity with fossil or nuclear fuels. For each house that installs PV solar panels up to 34 tons of gas emissions can be eliminated in the lifetime of those panels (Bond, 2000). Increasing concern over these by-products, decreasing cost for production of PV cells, increasing efficiencies of PV cells, and net metering laws have all helped PV power to gain in popularity over the last 30 years (Fies, 2001). The world shipments of PV cells have gone up from 0.1 Megawatts in 1971 to approximately 200 Megawatts in 1999 (EIA, 2000).