Dr. Gaurav Srivastava
Published: 2021-07-07
Total Pages: 61
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In terms of global installed capacity, solar PV has overtaken hydro and wind power as the third most important renewable energy source. Photovoltaic Solar Energy: From Fundamentals to Applications brings together the experience of international PV experts to give a thorough and up-to-date description of existing PV technologies, as well as an appraisal of technical advances. Key features: Written by top experts involved in parallel advancements in material sciences, solar cell research, and application-driven research and development. Provides a fundamental understanding of light, photons, and solar irradiance, as well as basic PV functioning concepts. Covers solar cell characterization techniques, economics, and applications, including silicon, thin-film, and hybrid solar cells. Provides a comprehensive overview of PV technologies, including crystalline silicon, chalcogenide thin film solar cells, thin-film silicon-based PV technologies, organic PV and III-Vs, PV concentrator technologies, and economics, life-cycle, and user aspects of PV technologies. This preface provides an outline of the major ideas covered in this book. The book covers the fundamental functional concepts of photovoltaics (PVs), as well as an introduction to semiconductor materials and a number of subjects related to the physics of solar cells in general. First, it covers the fundamentals of irradiance physics. The irradiance of the sun is determined by the composition of the atmosphere and, as a result, weather, which includes cloud formation and precipitation, particles and water vapor in the atmosphere, and gases contained by the atmosphere.