I understand that things like solar panels and wind power charge up electrons to generate power but how did noncharged electrons get back to the cell? What am I missing?
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Solar panels and generators have at least two wires, one is the ground wire and one is the wire with hot wire. What is done is not that diffrent from electrons are lifted from the ground wire to the hot wires.
When something is connected to them and draws power they need to be both connected do the ground and hot wire. Electron passes through the device between the wires. You can’t just connect to one and get electrical energy out of them, you need a closed circuit.
So for the same reasons you need to connect to both poles of a battery, you need to connect to both sides of a solar panel or electrical generator.
This explanation uses DC and ignores that the power grid is AC. That elections are lifted up is not exactly correct but is an approximate idea of how works.
You could imagine it as tight tube filled with marbles.. the tube has the same diameter as marble.
Now if you push more marbles at one end, they fall out on the other end
If you connected them in loop, they would travel in a loop back and forth
Electrons work similarly… They move freely or bond to atom… So “hole” from moved electron is replaced by another one
They do not. The panel moves electrons from one wire to another. Besides this movement no charging takes place.
In a box nearby, those electrons flow through the box and back to the original wire. That loop is all of the moving that they do.
In another set of wires, there is a pushing and pulling of electrons from the box. The same idea except the direction repeatedly changes. Several of these loops, with boxes between, run between the power station and your home. Your home even bas several of these loops, with a pushing and pulling between the wires. That is what moves the energy.
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