At present, the global community is aware of the critical limit of the pollution of fossil fuels. Many countries including Thailand have explored alternative energy, one of which is solar energy. In particular, the use of solar for electricity generation is important to reduce imported energy because Thailand?s primary commercial energy imports are 50%, approximately. The government has supported renewable energy through the long-term 22-yr alternative energy development plan 2015?C2036 (AEDP 2015) which aims to boost the production of electricity using renewable energy, especially solar, to 6000MW by the year 2036. They fund the price incentives of commercial power. The result is that the electricity authority of Thailand now has a production capacity of solar power-generation projects of 1558MW, and 1261MW of projects are under construction. This is 46.98% of the AEDP 2015 target. The major barriers of a solar system development are the high investment cost, the uncertain subsidy and lack of the thorough policy planning. Those obstructions are depended on the government strategy.

The development of the use of renewable energy (RE) to alleviate the electricity, fuel crises and poverty in Yemen and most developing countries is a crucial issue, which is significantly influenced by the psychological, contextual, and personal factors affecting public acceptance. This study aims to determine the personal and psychological determinants that influence the public?s knowledge of and attitudes and behavioral intentions toward solar energy use in the power sector in urban and rural areas in Yemen. In this study, the people?s behavioral intentions are evaluated by measuring their willingness to pay, willingness to change the currently used electricity source during power outages, and willingness to invest in the feed-in tariff (FiT) scheme. In this context, face-to-face interviews using a self-structured questionnaire were conducted with 348 households in Aden governorate (urban area) and 258 households in Lahj governorate (rural area). The results showed that, although the people in both areas are not well informed about RE resources, the benefits and drawbacks of solar energy use in the power sector, and the solar power technologies, they have highly positive attitudes toward the use of RE. Furthermore, 66%, 55.7%, and 78.4% of the urban population and 70%, 55.4%, and 75.6% of the rural population are willing to pay, to change electricity source, and to invest in FiT scheme, respectively. The findings also showed that existing small-scale solar projects have played a significant role in gaining public acceptance, particularly in rural areas that have higher installation and usage levels than urban area. Consequently, implementing pilot projects, disseminating information through formal and informal education, setting appropriate RE policies, and improving people?s livelihood in different country?s regions will lead to achieve a sustainable development of RE use.

In order to mitigate CO2 emission and improve the efficiency of the utilization of solar thermal energy (STE), solar thermal energy is proposed to be integrated into a power plant. In this paper, seven configurations were studied regarding the integration of STE. A 300MWe subcritical coal-fired plant was selected as the reference, chemical absorption using monoethanolamine solvent was employed for CO2 ?capture, and parabolic trough collectors and evacuated tube collectors were used for STE collection. Both technical analysis and economic evaluation were conducted. Results show that integrating solar energy with post-combustion CO2? capture can effectively increase power generation and reduce the electrical efficiency penalty caused by CO2 capture. Among the different configurations, Config-2 and Config-6, which use medium temperature STE to replace high pressure feedwater without and with CO2 capture, show the highest net incremental solar efficiency. When building new plants, integrating solar energy can effectively reduce the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The lowest LCOE, 99.28USD/MWh, results from Config-6, with a parabolic trough collector price of 185USD/m2. When retrofitting existing power plants, Config-6 also shows the highest net present value (NPV), while Config-2 has the shortest payback time at a carbon tax of 50USD/ton CO2. In addition, both LCOE and NPV/payback time are clearly affected by the relative solar load fraction, the price of solar thermal collectors and the carbon tax. Comparatively, the carbon tax can affect the configurations with CO2 capture more clearly than those without CO2 capture.