How Does a Solar Battery Charger Work?
There isn’t much difference between a solar battery charger and any other type of charger. A solar battery charger uses the sun’s light to charge a battery by converting this light into direct current. You can use a solar battery charger when you are not connected to the regular power grid and when you want to save costs on electricity or even to reduce pollution to the environment.
What are Solar Batter Chargers?
You can use a solar battery to power small devices such as calculators or use a number of them to power your home. These batteries are available in various shapes, types, sizes, prices and in different weights.
What is the Battery Made From?
In order to understand how a solar battery charger works it is necessary for you to know what they are made of. A solar battery charger is made up of photovoltaic cells that hold a specific amount of energy depending on the size and convert light into electricity. These cells are made of crystalline or amorphous silicon with the amorphous type being more flexible and longer lasting. The main purpose of these cells is to take up photons of energy from the sun, transfer this energy to electrons to enable them to move freely thus creating current.
A solar battery is made up of cadmium or hydrogen, an alloy, electrolyte and two terminals –positive and negative. When a chemical reaction occurs between the electrolyte and the cell’s components i.e. the positive and the negative plates, electrons, which are actually the electric current, are produced. These electrons flow from the negative terminal, through the circuit to give power and then return to the battery to give through the positive terminal.
How Does the Charger Work?
A solar battery charger consists of a solar panel that generates energy through a photovoltaic effect and then the energy is fed into a battery in form of electric current. The photovoltaic cells are made of positive and negative semiconductors. The positive semiconductor is deficient of electrons while the negative one has an excess of electrons. When the sun’s radiation strikes the cell, photons of energy are transferred to the negative semiconductor and electrons are knocked off and are free to move freely. When you bring the two semi-conductors together the electrons start flowing into the positive semi-conductor until equilibrium is established and the electrons cannot flow any more.
This equilibrium is commonly known as a p-n junction and when you create an external path the electrons start flowing again and in this way you create a current and voltage. If this current is directed to a battery, chemical reactions start taking place. These chemical reactions involve the electrodes in the battery cells and the electrolyte that separates them and in this way an electric current can be drawn up from the battery. Charging a battery is the very opposite of discharging it; discharging gives out current while charging takes in current and stores it so that the battery is restored to its initial state.