The Sahel region of Burkina, whose capital is Dori, is one of the regions of the country whose electricity coverage rate is very low, which happens to be a paradox because it has enormous solar deposits which are sources of energies. This is the essence of our study of a 50MW cylindrical-parabolic concentrator solar power plant in Dori. It should be noted that for the production of electricity through solar, several technologies exist, the choice of one over the other is made on technical and economic criteria. Essentially there are photovoltaic solar power plants, parabolic trough solar power plants, combined cycle solar power plants and tower power plants. The cylindrical-parabolic concentrator (CCP) solar power plant is chosen because it is more promising and its technology produces not only electricity but also sanitary hot water which is essential for this part of the country where it is very cold at certain period of the year. In this work, attention is paid to the numerical simulation of solar to thermal energy conversion using a parabolic trough concentrator for the design of a solar power plant in Dori. Therminol vp-1 is used as heat transfer fluid. The mathematical equations governing the operating principle of our PTC are described and solved using the finite difference method. The numerical results obtained indicate a thermal efficiency of 63.38% for our concentrator and an overall efficiency of 22.10% for the solar power plant. These results show real possibilities for electricity production in this region of the country.

Parabolic Solar Concentrator, Therminol vp-1