Solar energy department is responsible for development and deployment of solar technologies as clean, reliable and safe technologies. Solar department main mission is development of affordable solar systems in order to decrease high dependence on fossil fuels.

Solar department includes 3 different working groups. These groups are responsible for research about latest solar technologies, installing pilot projects for operational test and national planning about solar technologies in different applications. Solar department groups are:

 

1- Solar technologies research and assessment group

This group is responsible for research about solar technologies in developed countries and after assessing their missions, national planning for utilizing solar energy. The planning phase will be start after research and assessment

 

2- Solar thermal power plant group

This group started a pilot solar thermal power plant and so many domestic manufacturers gained experiments in this field. By executing this project, the first national solar thermal power plant started and domestic potential for producing different parts of this power plane were assessed which is required for scaled up projects.

 

3- Non-power plant applications group

Developing, constructing and executing solar systems for residential applications such as solar water heaters, solar desalination, and solar ventilation are the main goals of this group.

 

 

Iran has a great solar energy potential among other countries. Development of solar energy systems requires precise knowledge of Iran solar radiation. Solar thermal power plant site selection is possible by accurate knowledge about country. This project defined by Solar Energy Department to provide basic knowledge for planning solar projects.

I n the first phase of project, solar irradiance of Iran will be concluded by data from Satellite pictures and solar study stations. In the second phase, capacity and place of the solar power plants will be assigned by omitting some inappropriate places like cities, forests and shrubberies, protected and military areas, lakes and mountains, also applying other information such as water resources, high voltage lines and gas pipes.   

At last site selection priorities will be allocated based on fiscal parameters.

 

The main objectives of this project are:

- Providing Iran solar atlas

- Determining the place and capacity of appropriate sites for installing solar thermal power plants

- Fiscal and technical investigation and prioritize suitable sites for installing solar power plants

- Verifying appropriate sites for solar power plants in Iran

- Providing software algorithm for fiscal study of solar systems in Iran

- Developing Iran solar energy data base

 

  

Now and future activities:

 

- Investigating other countries activities in the field of solar radiation assessment

- First phase study on solar irradiation atlas and selecting the methodology of this project

- Installing solar irradiation study stations and data logging