Those lines are called the grid lines, and they're actually doing some serious work to light your house and keep you cool during the summer. From a distance, photovoltaic panels appear to be solid black or blue. Get up closer, though, and you can see that solar modules have a pattern of white lines. They're not there to look nice — they have a specific purpose. So, any system. Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry.