Pilot Low-Cost Concentrating Solar Power Systems Deployment in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study of Implementation Challenges

Abstract

Electricity is one of the most crucial resources that drives any given nation’s growth and development. The latest Sustainable Development Goals report indicates Africa still has a high deficit in electricity generation. Concentrating solar power seems to be a potential option to fill the deficit. That is because most of the components of concentrating solar power plants are readily available on the African market at affordable prices, and there are qualified local persons to build the plants. Pilot micro-concentrating solar power plants have been implemented in Sub-Saharan Africa and have shown promising results that could be expanded and leveraged for large-scale electricity generation. An assessment of a pilot concentrating solar power plant in the sub-region noticed one noteworthy obstacle that is the failure of the tracking system to reduce the operating energy cost of running the tracking control system and improve the multifaceted heliostat focusing behavior. This paper highlights the energy situation and the current development in concentrating solar power technology research in Africa. The paper also presents a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art solar tracking systems for central receiver systems to illustrate the current direction of research regarding the design of low-cost tracking systems in terms of computational complexity, energy consumption, and heliostat alignment accuracy.

Challenges and recent developments in solar tracking strategies for concentrated solar parabolic dish

“…Given the cost of tracking systems in terms of initial and energy costs, CSP STS is between 30-40 % higher than for fixed systems [13]. The tracking device is primarily responsible for 20% of the CSP plant's running and repair costs [14]. It is also important to reduce the valuation of solar trackers as much as possible to prove the economic viability of the CSP scheme.…”

Smart energy conservation system for study rooms

“…Furthermore, the successful use of energy efficiently is significantly impacted by behavior, habits, and energy-saving knowledge. Examples of energy-efficient habits or behaviors include adopting light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs instead of incandescent lamps, which may reduce energy use by up to 40% while producing the same light intensity, turning off lights, fans, and other appliances when leaving a room [3], adopting the generation and use of renewable energy [4], [5]. Unfortunately, humans have a propensity of forgetting, ignoring, or failing to turn off lights and fans while leaving a room.…”

A Machine Learning-Based Novel Energy Optimization Algorithm in a Photovoltaic Solar Power System

“…The usage of distributed energy resources (DERs) including solar power and wind has increased dramatically around the world in recent years [1,2]. Furthermore, solar energy is a completely free, easily accessible, and scalable renewable resource that may be used in a variety of applications and shown in Figure 1 [3].…”

“…The evolution of electricity systems has occurred over several decades. Economic, technological, environmental, and political motivations have all played a role in bringing about these transformations [1][2][3]. In a smart grid system [4,5], both energy and information are sent back and forth amongst the numerous stakeholders, allowing for bidirectional energy flow as well as bidirectional information flow.…”

“…To design the LFRSC, the tubular absorber served as a starting point for the process [1]. The tubular absorber radius can be approximated as half the width of the mirror element [2] divided by its radius. In this case, the first mirror is located 0:5W + f tan (ξ 0 ) distance from the planes, whereas the second mirror is located at 0:5W distance.…”