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Moroccos First Summer School for Revewable Energies with Participation of the Insitute of Solar Research

Université Hassan Ier - Settat, Marocco

The Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy (Masen) and the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) were the organizers of the event, which was held from the 1st to 5th July at the University of Settat. Fifty students, by the majority female from various Moroccan universities had successfully applied to participate in the summer school. In courses, lectures and group work the future engineers were introduced to the basics of renewable energies and deepened their knowledge in the three main topics wind energy, photovoltaic and concentrating solar thermal technology.

Two scientists from the DLR Institute of Solar Research, Prahl Christoph and Christoph Hilgert gave a series of lectures on concentrated solar power. A well balanced mixture of theoretical lectures as well as practical exercises and experiments invited the students to active participation.

An introductory session explained the theoretical basis and gave an overview on various CSP technologies. It was followed by practical exercises on how the core technologies, tower and parabolic trough actually work including a detailed description of optical and thermal loss processes in CSP systems and their optimization. In groups the participants worked on topics such as heat transfer and storage and the grid integration of CSP plants.

Group work with the Model of a Solar Tower

In the course of the practical part which took place in the garden of the University different functional models were deployed, on which the students applied their theoretical knowledge to practice.
Two miniature parabolic trough and two miniature solar towers including heliostats, powered by the Moroccan July sun, allowed the aspiring engineers to perform thermal measurements under (almost) real conditions.