Introduction and Literature Review

Abstract

As the world’s supply of fossil fuels shrinks, there is a great need for clean and affordable renewable energy sources (RES) in order to meet growing energy demands. Furthermore, the conventional plants based on fossil fuel have serious environmental and financial problems, and therefore, the dependency of the distribution networks on the RES such as solar power systems for generating electrical power is significantly promoted. In the past few decades, solar energy systems have been received great attention as an important type of RES. Nowadays, solar energy sources constitute appropriate commercial options for small and large power plants. The two mainstream categories of solar energy systems utilized for this purpose are concentrated solar power (CSP) and photovoltaic (PV). This chapter presents a brief introduction about the role, important need, and advantages of renewable energies for today and the future, especially solar energy such as PV and CSP systems. In addition, it introduces a survey for all types of CSP technologies. As well as, it presents a literature review for the LCOE and cost reduction of CSP and PV systems, CSP modeling, and the application of ANN technologies in various SF systems. Further, it presents the problem definition, objectives, and outlines of this thesis.