The Solar Lab at the University of Pretoria is a dedicated facility to investigate various applications of concentrating solar power (CSP). These applications include solar power generation, solar melting and solar thermal storage.

A centre piece of the lab is the solar dish collector, designed to concentrate the suns ray’s to allow for the testing of technologies used in wide number of industries, from energy generation to metallurgy.

Some of the solar dish collectors that form part of the Solar Laboratory 

The laboratory has been the site of numerous projects such as the Solar Turbo Combined Heat and Power Project. In this international collaboration, a solar-dish Brayton cycle was demonstrated for small-scale power generation using a micro-turbine.​ 

Contact Person: Prof. Willem le Roux ( [email protected])

SAURAN Solar Station

The Solar Lab also hosts a Solar Radiometric Station as part of the Southern African Universities Radiometric Network (SAURAN). These stations log various measurements such as direct normal irradiance, global horizontal irradiance, diffuse horizontal irradiance, wind speed and wind direction. The data is freely available to the public in minute, hourly and daily time-averaged intervals.
 

The SAURUN station at the University of Pretoria