Solar Science & Manufacturing — Intro Courses

Welcome, Brian. This site contains the two foundation courses of the solar curriculum, built out in full: lecture text, worked examples, review questions with answers, hands-on labs with shopping lists, and figures computed from real data (the ASTM G173 reference spectra (ASTM International, originally the American Society for Testing and Materials, publishes standards; G173 is its table of standard sunlight spectra) — standard tables of sunlight's power at each wavelength, published by the standards body ASTM International) and standard physics. Each unit also has a narrated audio file (MP3 format) and a video lecture (MP4 format) that walks through the page in order.

No background assumed. You do not need any prior knowledge of electricity, energy, materials or semiconductors. Every term, unit, symbol and abbreviation is written out and explained in plain language the first time it appears on each page, and each course has a glossary: SOL 101 glossary and SOL 102 glossary. "SOL" is just this curriculum's course-code prefix (for solar). PV, short for photovoltaic ("light-electricity"), means converting light directly into electricity; a solar cell is a PV device.

The value chain the whole curriculum follows. SOL 101 and SOL 102 give you the physics and materials vocabulary for every step.
The value chain the whole curriculum follows. SOL 101 and SOL 102 give you the physics and materials vocabulary for every step.

The two intro courses

Course What you will be able to do Units Labs
SOL 101 — Energy, Light & the Solar Resource understand charge, current, voltage, power and energy; compute the energy of light particles (photons) and how many arrive per second; read and add up the standard ground-level sunlight spectrum; explain the standard test conditions used to rate panels and the effect of temperature; derive the first energy-loss "waterfall" and the theoretical efficiency limit for a silicon cell 11 3
SOL 102 — Materials Science & Chemistry for Solar Technology explain how atoms bond and arrange into crystals in solar materials; how flaws and impurities shorten the life of charge carriers; phase diagrams (maps of which phases exist at which temperature and composition) and how impurities separate when silicon freezes; diffusion (atoms spreading through a solid); how silicon is refined and etched; thin-film layers; the materials that make up a solar module; and process safety 12 4

The courses can run in parallel. Suggested pace: 2 units per week each, plus one lab every week or two — about 6–8 weeks for both.

How to use a unit page

  1. Play the video or the audio at the top of the unit page, or read the page. The narration follows the page section by section, so you can do both.
  2. Work the worked examples with a calculator before reading their solution.
  3. Answer the review questions, then open the answers.
  4. Do the lab linked from the course page.

Start here

A note on numbers

Numbers come from named sources or are computed on this site (and say so). Rough figures are labelled estimate. Industry statistics (market shares, production efficiencies) are from the International Technology Roadmap for Photovoltaic (ITRPV, an annual industry survey), 17th edition (2026), and the Photovoltaics Report (2026) of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (Fraunhofer ISE, a German research institute), as summarised in the curriculum research; check the current editions before quoting them professionally.