John-Tux t1_j1lhbnm wrote on December 25, 2022 at 9:45 AM

"Conclusion: As a doctor in electrical engineering and according to my experience in the Sahara of Algeria yes solar energy for home worth it as long as your areas is not classified as a hot zone in summer, and your city is not a sandy wind place.

The planet earth is suffering actually from green house gases, and switching your electric production to solar will help you and help the environment to recover from what human being is doing now"

daleelsayarat-cars OP t1_j1lhjyd wrote on December 25, 2022 at 9:49 AM

Hey there, thank you for your comment!

i performed a practical training in Adrar (it is very hot there), and i do want to know why they install a solar power plant when they know that in summer it reaches 45 degrees ?? in think that Concentrated solar power is more efficient than solar panels in Algeria.

theonetrueelhigh t1_j1lr65a wrote on December 25, 2022 at 12:20 PM

The shade provided has value, too. Imagine reducing the amount of heat reaching your building with the same system that provides energy for it? Leveraging one's investment in such fashion is always a good idea, making your expenditures yield two benefits is just smart.

Concentrated solar is almost by design a utility scale installation with significant control and power conditioning considerations. CSP installations, by necessity, start big and stay big. They need a lot of land with nothing else on it Rooftop PV, on the other hand, starts small and can scale up as time and money allow. Its design and building considerations conform to the individual project very conveniently.

Are CSP installations more efficient? The very best ones are maybe 25% efficient at converting solar power into electricity. Even the very best PV panels aren't as good as that but unlike CSP, PV has many promising developments under research that could as much as double its efficiency into the mid-40s, whereas CSP is, at its core, steam power. That is very mature technology and energy harvesting improvements in that field in the last 50 years have been, by comparison, marginal. Algeria's high temperature doesn't really improve things, it makes generating steam in the CSP slightly easier while also reducing the capacity of condensers. If there's a good use for the waste heat of the condensers then there are energy reclamation opportunities there, of course.