Used in homes and buildings, photovoltaic shingles convert sunlight into clean, usable electricity. The shingles offer a more attractive, less cumbersome alternative to solar panels. Photovoltaic shingles are basically very small solar panels made of polycrystalline silicon that absorbs and converts any light-frequency matching the wavelengths of the sun to usable energy. Instead of the ping-pong table-sized, solar panels of photovoltaic cell systems, photovoltaic shingles are smaller and more efficient. One shingle by itself could not even power a couple of lights, but several linked together over a large portion of a rooftop, hundreds of square feet of surface area, can usually cover all of a household’s energy needs