Concentrator photovoltaics

Concentrator photovoltaics (also known as CPV) is a way of making electricity out of sunlight. The way it works is that sunlight is collected in a special device that looks like a big bowl and it focuses the sunlight onto a small area. This makes the sunlight much brighter, and then that light is used to turn it into electricity. Specifically, the bright light is used to heat up a special material (called a photovoltaic cell) that then produces electricity. So the concentrator photovoltaics device takes the sunlight, makes it brighter, and then uses it to make electricity.