How solar panels actually work?
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Imagine a tube filled with balls. As you add more balls, it pushes earlier balls through the tube. Fundamentally this is what electricity is, you push balls (electrons) down a tube (wires) and that movement is electricity.
Imagine a box with a divider in it. Put all your balls in one side of the box. You pick up a ball and move it to the other side of the divider. Keep doing this until the other side is full and the original side is empty. This is what a solar panel does. It has 2 sides, and photons do what your hand did. When the right photon hits the panel on the correct side, it “picks up” a ball and moves it to the other side. If you were to remove the divider, the balls would fall and even out in the box, but that divider keeps that from happening.
Now, take a bunch of tubes and cut holes onto two sides of the box so that there is 1 hole on each side of the divider. Connect the tubes together. so that one hole connects to the other. Fill one side of the box with balls and start moving them over. There’s now a way for the balls to get from the side you’re filling to the side you’re taking balls from, through those tubes. This is how a solar panel works when it’s connected to a circuit, like into your home or power grid.
Electricity works by something “pushing” electrons through a wire. In solar panels it’s done by pushing electrons through a 1-way barrier and leaving space for electrons on the other side. Photons are what allow electrons to make it through that 1-way barrier. In a traditional generator, magnets are used to push electrons through the wires. In hydrogen fuel cell, the hydrogen is forced through a material that only hydrogen ions can pass through while electrons are forced to go around the material through a wire.
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