In light of the global crises that the world suffers from, the renewable energy exploitation is a viable solution to remedy the various energy crises, knowing that renewable energy is a source of environmental credibility, as it does not cause any pollution or any emissions harmful to the environment. Among the most important renewable energy sources, solar energy is the most important type as it can be exploited thermally by adopting various solar collectors, especially solar concentrators. This paper has been devoted to illustrate the types of solar concentrators, namely point-focus concentrators (Heliostat Field Collectors and Parabolic Dish Collectors) and linear concentrators (Linear Fresnel Reflectors and Parabolic Trough Collectors), in an attempt to clarify its principle and its multiple uses domestically and industrially, especially in areas that are characterized by the abundance of its direct solar radiation. The solar concentrator is a solar thermal energy concentration system, because its use reduces the consumption of fossil fuels harmful to the environment and directly contributes to climate change. Solar thermal concentrators are an effective alternative to fossil generators for thermal energy, as they have many important uses such as the solar electricity production of solar electricity in power plants, industrial and domestic water heating, and have many other industrial uses.

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This study aims to conduct an experimental thermal examination of a parabolic trough collector in Ouargla region at Algeria, which will be used as a solar water heater. The solar collector was manufactured and then experimentally tested, as its theoretical optical performance was estimated at 75.06%, while the values of its true thermal performance are 10.61, 10.68 and 8.85 % for 13 May, 14 May and 15 May. Although its thermal performance is somewhat low, the studied PTC is effective in heating the water, whereas, using a volumetric flow of 0.011 l/s, about 317 liters of water can be heated daily at 42°C, knowing that the daily average consumption of hot water in a typical house is 250 liters because the Ouargla region is strategically located that receives huge amounts of solar irradiance

This paper designs a nonlinear PI-type controller for the robust control of a boost DC-DC converter using a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for increasing the output voltage of the photovoltaic (PV) system. In addition, the PI controller is used to tracking the maximum power from the PV panel, at different atmospheric condition. For tuning PI controllers is a tedious work and it is difficult to tune the PI gains optimally due to the nonlinearity. This paper presents an approach to use the particle swarm optimization algorithm to design the optimal PI controllers. The Simulations results show that the proposed controller exhibits better behavior in terms of settling time and overshoot and better performance of the converter.

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