desert

• Magdalena Schools Heat Water and Save Money with ARRA-Funded Solar Thermal Systems (2010)-

  This case study comes from the New Mexico Energy Department. It looks at how the Magdalena School District installed solar thermal water heating systems in their schools with federal stimulus money.

  The Magdalena school is small, with a 124,000 square foot building and about 450 children. The schools hot water was being supplied by 2 propane fueled boilers, one at 600,000 BTUs and one at 1,000,000 BTUs. Now, the school has two 20-gallon heat exchangers, both supplied with water heated by four solar thermal panels, saving the school around 20% on its energy costs.

• Concentrated Solar Power: Focusing the Sun’s Energy for Large‐scale Power Generation (2009)-

  This factsheet was created by Tracy Jennings and Laura Parsons of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute based in Washington D.C. It focuses on the various system types of concentrating solar power and its key features.

• Future Giant Solar Park in the Sahara (2009)-

  A giant solar park is to be developed in the Sahara.

   

• Concentrating Solar Power for Seawater Desalination (2007)-

  This extensive study from 2007 assesses in a detailed way the potential of concentrated solar power (CSP) systems for large scale seawater desalination. The geographical scope of the report focuses on the urban centres in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

  The objective of the study is to demonstrate that these large scale CSP processes can be used to provide water supply in a balanced, affordable and secure way and as such helping avoiding a threatening fresh water deficit.

• Clean Power from Deserts- A document produced by the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC), in 2007, discusses the policy options and market situation of increasing the use of renewable energy in the so-called MENA region (Middle East and North Africa). According to scientists, this region will be severely threatened by water scarcity problems in the coming years. Taking that into account, this document tries to show how renewable energies could be the solution to the imminent water crisis situation, notably the use of sea water desalination, combined with solar thermal power from deserts.
• Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East-

  This working paper from the Center for Global Development (CGDEV) looks into the economics of solar thermal or concentrating solar power (CSP).

• Solar Thermal Power Generation: Potential in Algeria & Hassi R’Mel Project (2008)-

  This presentation from 2008 assesses the potential of Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) development in Algeria. The first part gives a general overview of the basics of CSP after which the presentation explains how solar thermal energy is being promoted through renewable energy related programmes.

  The main targets for Algeria are to increase the renewable energy production to 5% by 2010 as well as the energy export via under-sea connection to the European market.