Jenis panel surya

Panel surya / solar cell mengubah intensitas sinar matahari menjadi energi listrik. Panel surya / solar cell menghasilkan arus yang digunakan untuk mengisi baterai.

Panel surya / solar cell terdiri dari photovoltaic, yang menghasilkan listrik dari intensitas cahaya, saat intensitas cahaya berkurang (berawan, hujan, mendung) arus listrik yang dihasilkan juga akan berkurang.

Dengan menambah panel surya / solar cell (memperluas) berarti menambah konversi tenaga surya. Umumnya panel surya / solar cell dengan ukuran tertentu memberikan hasil tertentu pula. Contohnya ukuran a cm x b cm menghasilkan listrik DC (Direct Current) sebesar x Watt per hour/ jam.

Jenis panel surya / solar cell : 
Polikristal (Poly-crystalline)
Merupakan panel surya / solar cell yang memiliki susunan kristal acak. Type Polikristal memerlukan luas permukaan yang lebih besar dibandingkan dengan jenis monokristal untuk menghasilkan daya listrik yang sama, akan tetapi dapat menghasilkan listrik pada saat mendung.

Monokristal (Mono-crystalline)
Merupakan panel yang paling efisien, menghasilkan daya listrik persatuan luas yang paling tinggi. Memiliki efisiensi sampai dengan 15%. Kelemahan dari panel jenis ini adalah tidak akan berfungsi baik ditempat yang cahaya mataharinya kurang (teduh), efisiensinya akan turun drastis dalam cuaca berawan.

Amorphous
Amorphous silicon (a-Si) has been used as a photovoltaic solar cell material for calculators for some time. Although they are lower performance than traditional c-Si solar cells, this is not important in calculators, which use very low power. a-Si's ability to be easily deposited during construction more than makes up for any downsides.

More recently, improvements in a-Si construction techniques have made them more attractive for large-area solar cell use as well. Here their lower inherent efficiency is made up, at least partially, by their thinness - higher efficiencies can be reached by stacking several thin-film cells on top of each other, each one tuned to work well at a specific frequency of light. This approach is not applicable to c-Si cells, which are thick as a result of their construction technique and are therefore largely opaque, blocking light from reaching other layers in a stack.

The main advantage of a-Si in large scale production is not efficiency, but cost. a-Si cells use approximately 1% of the silicon needed for typical c-Si cells, and the cost of the silicon is by far the largest factor in cell cost. However, the higher costs of manufacture due to the multi-layer construction have, to date, make a-Si unattractive except in roles where their thinness or flexibility are an advantage.