Small scale concentrating solar plants for rural electrification

Concentrating solar power (CSP) seems to be a promising solution for rural electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa. Small scale CSP plant appears to be most appropriate because it is suitable to the needs of rural communities: most of components can be found to be of low cost in the African market and there are available qualified local human resource to build the systems. A state of art of small scale CSP plants in the range of 1-500 kW(e) are reviewed in this paper to showcase previous and current works undertaken throughout the world. 35 small scale CSP plants are identified and reviewed in the paper. Technical analysis is conducted on the identified plants to understand their operating principles. The technical analysis highlighted reasons behind the choices made for every component from the solar field to the power block.