Thank you all for your insightful comments.

They are two main Solar Energy technologies for power generation.

Photovoltaic (PV): Solar cells can generate electricity from sun light with two essential steps. First, absorption of light generates an electron-hole pair. The electron and hole are then separated by the structure of the device, thus generating electrical power. The phenomena in which light, or in other words, photon, causes the separation of electrons, is called photovoltaic.

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP): The general idea of a photovoltaic (PV) concentrator is to use optics to focus sunlight on a small receiving solar cell; thus, the cell area in the focus of the concentrator can be reduced by the concentration ratio. At the same time the light intensity on the cell is increased by the same ratio. In other words, cell surface is replaced by lens or mirror surface in PV concentrators and the efficiency and price of both determine the optimum configuration.

Conversion of concentrated sunlight gives additional possibility for increasing the efficiency of solar cells. The generated photocurrent increases linearly with light intensity and the output voltage increases, in turn, with the logarithmic law; thus, light intensity following the generated power rises superlinearly with concentrating the radiation, so that the efficiency of photovoltaic conversion increases.

Finally, before photovoltaic systems can provide a substantial part of the world’s need for electrical energy, there needs to be a large reduction in the cost. Studies concluded that concentrating solar energy systems could eventually achieve lower cost than conventional flat plate PV power systems. The lower cost results from the following:

1. Lower material expense. The semiconductor material for solar cells is a major cost element of all photovoltaic systems; therefore, reducing the amount of required solar cell material is an effective approach to lowering PV system cost.

2. Higher cell efficiency. Concentrating PV cells achieve higher efficiencies than do non-concentration PV cells.

3. Increased annual energy production. Increased annual energy production is achieved by the incorporation of two-axis sun tracking which is an inherent requirement in any concentrating system. All high-concentration systems require a sun-tracking control system.

You can find lots of information at:

Concentrator Photovoltaics, Editors: Antonio L. Luque, Viacheslav M. Andreev, Copyright © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007

Photovoltaics technoloy based on semiconductors that convert sunlight directly into electrical current.

Concentrating solar power uses mirrors and/or lenses to focus ambient light at 10–400x intensity on to those very expensive ~40% efficient photovoltaic chips to attempt to get maximum power from a given amount of sunlight at a lesser cost…

I agree with Milad Fallah and Lahcen El Iysaouy

good information

I agree with Milad Fallah and Lahcen El Iysaouy

good information

Photovoltaic is phenomena that turns the light into electricity by using a semiconductor materials and solar concentrators are devices that work on the basic principle of focusing the sun light to gain more light intensity and higher temperature which increases the rate at which heat can be efficiently converted into electricity on solar thermal technology, or photovoltaic solar technology where the light intensity plays the main role

The difference between photovoltaics and concentrated solar power can be very well differentiated by understanding the dual nature of light and quantum theory. light acts as both particle (photon) and wave & quantum theory assumes that lights are nothing but little packets of energy. the same can be applied for understanding the difference between them.

In case of photovoltaics, the particle nature of light acts as base principle where the photon with energy packets helps electrons in overcoming the potential barrier and produce current. This works as long as photon of any wavelength and intensity is available for exciting the electron to overcome potential barrier.In simple, the energy packets in the solar radiation makes electron excited and make it produce current.

In case of concentrated solar powers, the wave nature of light plays a dominant role where the heat is radiated by means of energy waves thereby heating the concentrated solar setups. Since, it primarily a wave phenomenon, it can be easily reflected and diffracted without much loss in the energy. In simple ,the heat in form of energy waves radiate heat directly into the system.

On the whole, light energy powers the photovoltaics whereas heat energy powers the concentrated setups, however, both the light energy and heat energy are originated only groom the sun.

Good Luck Bro

Thank you for your detailed explanation Dr. Gokul Raghavendra Srinivasan. The information is very useful.

Regards,

MO.

Solar energy is the light and heat emitted from the sun that humans have harnessed to their advantage since ancient times using a combination of constantly developing technologies

Sunlight concentration through mirrors concave reflective and varied

Thank you so much Djaafar Zemali .

Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels differ from solar thermal systems in that they do not use the sun's heat to generate power. Instead, they use sunlight through the 'photovoltaic effect' to generate direct electric current (DC) in a direct electricity production process. Please refer to: http://www.renewablegreenenergypower.com/solar-energy-facts-concentrated-solar-power-csp-vs-photovoltaic-pv-panels/

Many thanks to Abdullah Noori for sharing the useful information.

Regards,

MO.

Just want to add a point to the answer of Abdullah Noori. In solar concentrators more heat focused to the receiver generates more temperature, output improves. In photovoltaics the output is adversely proportional to the temperature of the solar cell. More is the cell temperature more the loss in the power.

Thank you Naved Mubashshir. The information you shared is very useful.

Regards,

MO

There are two main methods to generate electricity from the solar energy; the direct conversion through the solar cells or indirect conversion by thermodynamic machines where a fluid is heated to move turbines driving conventional electric generators. To heat the fluid moving the turbines one has to concentrate sun light and focus it at an absorber to heat up the fluid since the concentration is required to achieve the high temperature required to operate efficiently the thermometric machines.

The major advantage of the photovoltaic PV generation is that there are no moving parts in the system. Therefore, the PV generators received and still receiving intensive research to advance them and make economically feasible.

These efforts succeeded to reduce the cost of PV to almost compete with the conventional electricity generators. It is so that nowadays one build PV stations with Gw power. I think the PV dominated the solar thermal method.

Best wishes