ABSTRACT
Arid regions in southern Algeria represents an alternative to face many national problems: population growth, energy demand, water needs... etc, given the availability of many natural resources such as water reserves, oil, mines and also solar energy. For this reason different demonstration projects devoted to PV solar energy applications have been realized. At the beginning, the main interest was focused basically on the technical feasibility and the economic viability of the PV systems to be installed. These last years, a special attention has been accorded to data collection from the operational PV installations. A special program consisting in supplying 20 installations with data loggers has been set-up. In our belief, it is an efficient way to learn about the technical, economical and even social aspects to be able to propose more reliable and cost effective PV systems.
