[authors: Ben Daee and Sadegh Khosravi]
Introduction
The clock is ticking on fossil fuels. Protecting the environment by “going green” is not only on the near horizon of the power generation industry across the world, but the initiative has been adopted by many other industries including auto, high-tech, and manufacturing. Renewable energy sources constitute almost 63% of electricity production in Canada (15% in the US). While solar power only accounts for less than 0.5% of the total power generation in Canada (0.9% in the US)[1], it is the fastest growing source of electricity worldwide among all types of renewable energies. There are many reasons why large-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) panels have not become widespread in North America; some obstacles could be low efficiency, high maintenance cost, politics, etc. On a small scale though, PV panels (solar panels) are being…