Solar Energy Word Search

From photon to plug: the words of solar panels, solar heat and sunlight, each with a short meaning.

Name Date

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 20 words found

WSZAPNNYHQWQUIP

RFTRHIWQEHFFITH

EPRMOYEZAWABSMO

LNOMTBATTERYUFT

EAOTOTSILICONCO

LPFANRENEWABLEV

EGTWPANELXRUINO

CMODULEOSRRFGEL

TBPXISDZORATHRT

RARCWATTLAYDTGA

OCZMFEUIADAGAYI

NESDINVERTERENC

ELECTRICITYITMJ

ELSWSNAMHBODSMC

ATIMIRROREODYNR

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

PanelPANEL
CellCELL
ModuleMODULE
ArrayARRAY
PhotovoltaicPHOTOVOLTAIC
SiliconSILICON
PhotonPHOTON
ElectronELECTRON
WattWATT
InverterINVERTER
BatteryBATTERY
GridGRID
ElectricityELECTRICITY
RooftopROOFTOP
MirrorMIRROR
HeatHEAT
SunlightSUNLIGHT
SolarSOLAR
EnergyENERGY
RenewableRENEWABLE

20 words from the Solar Energy Key Terms list.

Start from a list

Easy: words go across and down.

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Show clues, not words

Word list

Large print Lower-case letters Name and date line on paper

The puzzle changes as you go. See the puzzle

Answer key: Solar Energy Word Search

WSZAPNNYHQWQUIP

RFTRHIWQEHFFITH

EPRMOYEZAWABSMO

LNOMTBATTERYUFT

EAOTOTSILICONCO

LPFANRENEWABLEV

EGTWPANELXRUINO

CMODULEOSRRFGEL

TBPXISDZORATHRT

RARCWATTLAYDTGA

OCZMFEUIADAGAYI

NESDINVERTERENC

ELECTRICITYITMJ

ELSWSNAMHBODSMC

ATIMIRROREODYNR

PANEL, CELL, MODULE, ARRAY, PHOTOVOLTAIC, SILICON, PHOTON, ELECTRON, WATT, INVERTER, BATTERY, GRID, ELECTRICITY, ROOFTOP, MIRROR, HEAT, SUNLIGHT, SOLAR, ENERGY, RENEWABLE

Next step Print circuits, current and voltage Type in the terms from your own energy unit

All 119 words

Solar Panels and Cells 25

Amorphous Describes the kind of silicon used in the cells of pocket calculators.
Array A group of panels wired together; it can hold two or hundreds.
Bus bars The larger metal strips on a cell's front that gather current from the fine lines.
Cell The smallest working unit of a PV system; many are grouped to form a panel.
Coating An anti-reflective one on a cell's surface cuts the light that bounces away.
Crystalline Describes the ordered solid form of silicon used in most solar cells.
Efficiency The share of the energy in sunlight that a cell converts into electricity.
Electron A negatively charged particle; absorbed sunlight knocks it loose from an atom in a cell.
Fingers The fine metal lines printed on the front of a cell to collect current.
Frame The metal edge that supports a panel's structure.
Junction The meeting of two types of semiconductor in one crystal, at the heart of a solar cell.
Microinverter A small device that converts the direct current of a single panel to alternating current.
Module A name used in the trade for one packaged unit of connected PV cells.

Show all 119 words (106 more)

Solar Panels and Cells, continued

Panel A flat, weather-tight board of connected cells that turns sunlight into electricity.
Perovskite One of the newer types of solar cell, alongside organic and quantum dot cells.
Photon A particle of light; a cell makes electricity only from the ones it absorbs.
Photovoltaic Describes a device that turns sunlight straight into electricity; PV for short.
Semiconductor A material that conducts electricity better than an insulator but less well than a conductor.
Silicon The chemical element, a semiconductor, that dominates the making of solar cells.
South The direction most fixed panels face in the northern hemisphere.
Thin film A kind of solar cell made by laying slim layers of PV material on glass, plastic or metal.
Tilt The slope at which a fixed panel is set to work best.
Tracker A device that turns a panel through the day to keep it facing the Sun.
Wafer A thin slice of semiconductor from which a solar cell is made.
Watt The unit of power; one PV cell can produce only 1 or 2.

Solar Power Systems 23

Alternating With "current", the direction-reversing flow in which nearly all electricity is supplied.
Battery A store of electricity that a panel's direct current can charge.
Capacity The full output a power station is built to deliver.
Circuit The loop that electrons flow around once a cell is connected to a load.
Controller With "charge", the device that protects a battery from being overcharged.
Current A flow of electric charge.
Direct With "current", the one-way flow of electricity that PV cells generate.
Electricity The form of energy that PV cells make directly from sunlight.
Grid The network that delivers electricity from producers to consumers.
Installer A worker who fits solar panels to buildings.
Inverter The device that changes a panel's direct current into the alternating current of the grid.
Kilowatt One thousand watts; a rooftop system is rated at a few, or a few tens, of these.
Megawatt One million watts; big PV power stations are rated at hundreds of these.
Mounting The hardware that fixes panels to a roof or to the ground.
Net metering A billing plan that lets a home use the power its panels made at any time, not only at once.
Optimizer A converter that tunes each panel's output to harvest the most energy.
Remote Describes far-off places without power lines, which panels have supplied since the late 1970s.
Rooftop The part of a house or other building where its panels are mounted.
Standalone Describes a system that runs with no link to the public power network.
Storage Keeping energy for later use.
Utility In "___-scale", the word for the largest PV power stations.
Volt The unit for the electrical push that builds up between a lit cell's front and back.
Wiring The cables that link panels, inverter and the other parts of a system.

Solar Heat and Mirrors 25

Chimney With "solar", a shaft that ventilates a building using Sun-warmed air.
Collector A device that gathers heat by absorbing sunlight, often to warm a home's water.
Concentrate To gather sunlight from a wide area onto a small one.
Cooker With "solar", a device that uses direct sunlight to heat food and drinks.
Dish A mirrored bowl, like a very large satellite antenna, that always points straight at the Sun.
Drying A use of the Sun's rays for thousands of years: preserving food by removing moisture.
Fluid A liquid or gas; in most solar thermal plants one is heated to make steam.
Focus The point or line where a curved mirror brings sunlight together.
Greenhouse A building of transparent material that lets sunlight in for growing plants.
Heat Energy felt as warmth; the Sun sends it along with light.
Heliostat A flat reflector that turns through the day to keep sunlight on one target.
Lens A piece of curved glass; some high-temperature collectors use one to concentrate sunlight.
Mirror A reflecting surface; solar power plants use fields of them to concentrate sunlight.
Molten salt A hot liquid that stores the heat a solar tower or trough has collected.
Oven A box that collects and absorbs sunlight to cook food.
Parabolic Describes the curve of a mirror that brings parallel rays to one focus.
Passive Describes a building design that collects the Sun's heat with windows, walls and floors.
Pond With "solar", a body of salty water that collects and stores the Sun's heat.
Receiver The part of a solar thermal plant that takes in the sunlight sent by the reflectors.
Steam Water vapor, made with the Sun's heat, that drives a power plant's turbine.
Still With "solar", a device that uses the Sun's heat to evaporate and purify water.
Thermal With "solar", describes technology that captures the Sun's energy as warmth.
Tower A tall structure with a receiver on top, at which a field of mirrors aims sunlight.
Trough A long, U-shaped mirror that focuses sunlight on a tube running along it.
Turbine A machine with a rotating shaft that steam drives to generate electricity.

Sunlight 23

Angle The slant at which sunlight strikes a panel; trackers keep it small.
Atmosphere The layer of air that scatters and filters sunlight on its way to the ground.
Beam With "direct", sunlight that travels straight from the Sun without being scattered.
Cloud It blocks the Sun's direct rays and turns bright sunshine into scattered light.
Daytime The hours with the Sun up over the horizon.
Diffuse Describes sunlight that air or clouds have scattered before it reaches the ground.
Energy The ability to do work; the Sun has been producing it for billions of years.
Hour In 2002 the solar energy Earth absorbed in one of these topped a year of world energy use.
Irradiance The power of sunlight arriving on each square meter of a surface.
Location Where on Earth a system stands, one of the things that set how much sunlight reaches it.
Plasma The hot, glowing state of matter of which the Sun is a massive sphere.
Rays Narrow beams of light; people have used the Sun's for warmth for thousands of years.
Renewable Describes an energy source that nature refills on a human timescale, such as the Sun or the wind.
Season The time of year, one of the things that change how much sunlight a place receives.
Sky Where the Sun's daily path runs; tracking panels follow it.
Solar Of the Sun: the word for energy, panels and power that come from it.
Spectrum The full spread of wavelengths in the Sun's radiation.
Star What the Sun is: the one at the center of the Solar System.
Sunlight The radiation that reaches Earth from our star, about 8.3 minutes after leaving its surface.
Ultraviolet Radiation with wavelengths shorter than those of the light we can see.
Visible Describes the band of light that the human eye can see.
Warmth How people feel the invisible infrared part of sunlight.
Weather Along with time of day, place and season, it sets how much sunlight is available.

Solar Power in Use 23

Acres Units of land; the largest PV power plants cover many of them.
Agrivoltaics Sharing one piece of land between solar panels and farming.
Becquerel French physicist who discovered the photovoltaic effect in 1839.
Calculator A pocket device whose small cells have run on light since the late 1970s.
Carbon With "dioxide", a gas that solar energy systems do not emit while operating.
Desalination Removing salt from water, which solar energy can power.
Farm With "solar", a large power station whose arrays can cover many acres.
Floating Describes solar panels fixed to a structure that sits on a lake or reservoir.
Gigawatt One billion watts; the world's PV capacity reached about 2,260 of these by the end of 2024.
Growth Since 1992 the worldwide use of photovoltaics has shown the exponential kind.
Landfill Where about 90 percent of retired US solar panels ended up as of 2023.
Lantern A portable solar light: an LED lamp, a small panel and a battery.
Pollution Solar energy systems add none to the air while they operate.
Pump A machine that lifts water; solar ones stand in for diesel models.
Recycling Recovering glass, metals and semiconductor material from old panels.
Sail With "solar", a large sheet that sunlight pushes to move a spacecraft.
Satellite From the late 1950s on, PV cells have powered these in space.
Silent How PV systems operate: with no moving parts and no noise.
Spacecraft Almost every one ever launched has used solar panels as its power source.
Streetlight A lamp on a pole whose own panel charges a battery for the night.
Vanguard With the number 1, the 1958 satellite that was first to run on solar electric power.
Vehicle With "solar", an electric one powered wholly or largely by direct sunlight.
Watch A wristwatch is among the small devices that a single PV cell can power.

How it works

The first grid of this solar energy word search carries 20 key terms: Solar, Panel, Photovoltaic, Renewable, Sunlight, Inverter, Battery and Watt, and a dozen more. Wind, water and fossil fuels have their lists on the energy word search.

Read the full guide

How a panel makes electricity

Solar Panels and Cells is a list of 25 words: Silicon, Wafer, Junction, Thin film, and the Fingers and Bus bars printed on a cell. Solar Power Systems, with 23, follows the current from the Inverter to the Grid: Direct, Alternating, Net metering, Kilowatt.

Heat, light and where solar is used

Solar Heat and Mirrors has 25 words for the thermal side, such as Heliostat, Trough, Molten salt and Cooker. Sunlight has 23, among them Irradiance, Spectrum and Diffuse. Solar Power in Use has 23, from Calculator and Streetlight to Agrivoltaics and Vanguard.

Thin film, Bus bars, Net metering and Molten salt hide closed up: NETMETERING.
Easy Solar Energy has 33 words of three to five letters for younger classes: Cell, Watt, Grid, Heat, Rays.

Questions and answers

What is solar energy?

The radiant energy of the Sun's light and heat. People have used the Sun's rays for warmth and for drying food for thousands of years; today the same energy also heats water and buildings and is turned into electricity.

How do solar panels work?

A panel is made of photovoltaic cells of semiconductor material, most often silicon. When a cell absorbs sunlight, electrons are knocked loose and flow as direct current. An inverter changes that into the alternating current of homes and the grid.

What are the two main types of solar energy technology?

Photovoltaics and concentrating solar-thermal power, by the US Department of Energy's count. Photovoltaic panels turn sunlight straight into electricity. Concentrating plants use mirrors to focus sunlight on a receiver, and the heat makes steam for a turbine.

Is solar energy renewable?

Yes. Renewable means that nature refills the resource on a human timescale, and sunlight is one of the most widely used renewable sources. How much reaches one place still changes with the time of day, the season and the weather.

Does the solar energy word search print with an answer key?

Yes, free: page one is the puzzle with a Name and Date line, page two its answer key. Tick Show clues, not words and Array becomes "A group of panels wired together; it can hold two or hundreds."

All 119 words

Solar Panels and Cells 25

Solar Panels and Cells, continued

Solar Power Systems 23

Solar Heat and Mirrors 25

Sunlight 23

Solar Power in Use 23

How it works

How a panel makes electricity

Heat, light and where solar is used

Questions and answers

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