What is Photovoltaics?

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Photovoltaics

Renewable energies are coming from sustainable sources, that is from permanent processes in the environment, so that they are inexhaustible for millions of years ahead. Main renewable energy sources are energy of wind, water, biomass, geothermal power and solar. Photovoltaic technologies feature the direct transformation of solar power into electricity.

Photovoltaic technology is a key technology for space flight, well developed and improved for many decades.

For about ten years, photovoltaics has attained a rising importance in the civil usage of renewable energies. The reason of this is that the photovoltaic technology can be used for production of electricity almost everywhere, especially on largely available rooftops, with a very low level of negative side effects. The core of a PV system is a semiconductor material. In the overwhelming majority of real systems, this is silicon, an abundant material which forms 1/6 of the earth’s crust. So not only solar energy itself, but also the raw material for its exploitation is inexhaustible. In sharp contrast to oil and the like, a shortage situation can only arise for the industrial processing and cleaning capacity, never for the supply from nature!