Comparative study of two configurations of solar tower power for electricity generation in Algeria

The aim of this paper is to provide a comparative energetic and economic assessment of two solar tower power configurations; the molten salt (MS) and the direct steam generation (DSG) technologies in order to study the appropriate configuration for Algerian climate conditions. For this, Tamanrasset has been chosen as representative site to simulate the proposed solar tower power plant configurations. The first section of this paper analyses the conversion of the solar energy into electric energy. The NREL's SAM software (Solar Advisor Model) is used to evaluate the energetic performances of the two plant configurations in the proposed site and also to study their economic feasibility in the second section. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open ccess article under the CC BY-NC-ND license. (http://creativc.commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/1.