HANDS-ON SIMPLE PHOTOCELL DEMONSTRATION TO EXPLORE SOLAR ENERGY CONCEPTS

Headnote

Abstract: The development of clean and renewable energy is the one of the important challenges that scientist will confront in the near future. To get involved the young generation in learning solar energy seems to happen much more difficult, though. Accessibility of some of the materials through home or school-based experiments could be one of the main reasons why they are not eager to learn. Even the research currently made on semiconductors for solar energy conversion indicated the same result. On the other hand, dye sensitized solar cells (DSC) which are used for the electricity production from solar radiation are both cheap and easily accessed compared with the conventional photovoltaic cells. For these reasons, an experiment has been developed by using ordinary and harmless products for the construction of a dye sensitized solar cell that has the similar construction used in natural photosynthesis. The conversion of solar energy to electrical energy can be displayed through the usage of this simple and easily assembled construction. To check the utility of DSC on teaching solar energy conversion a project was realized. The aim of this project was to supply a cheap and an easily accessed hands-on exercise for high school students. Students were both given a short outline about the basic measurements related to photovoltaic cell performance and shown the characterization of this performance. They were also suggested to utilize these concepts for their demonstrations.

Keywords: Solar Energy, Hands-On Learning; Collaborative Learning; Dye-sensitized Solar Cells

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I. INTRODUCTION

Considering many disadvantages of using non-renewable fossil fuels, it is important to focus on sources of energy which are known as renewable energy. These sustainable sources generally considered as form of an energy resource that can be replaced rapidly by a natural process such as power generated from the sun or from the geothermal sources. It is necessary to develop clean, renewable and sustainable energy conversion systems which can solve global problems such as clean water scarcity, food shortage, and environmental pollution.

Most of the renewable energy, except geothermal and wave power, come from the sun which releases huge amounts of free and clean energy into space. Some of incident radiation is infrared and ultraviolet light, but most of it is visible light...