Solar Potential in Saudi Arabia for Flat-Plate Surfaces of Varying Tilt Tracking the Sun

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article contains factual errors like solar flat plate collector is only used for heat production, for electricity production we use photovoltaic modules.  
For some literature references are not very clear. Items 3-5 refer to radiation modeling, while the authors refer them to increasing the efficiency of static photovoltaic systems.
The authors state that dual-axis systems started being used 10 years ago while even the article they cite is 15 years old.
The article contains many direct word-for-word rewrites from the authors' previous articles even in the results which undermines the relevance of the new article.
The model used is inadequate for use in the case of radiation modeling for tracking systems because it does not take into account the anisotropy of solar radiation, including mainly diffuse circumsolar radiation. Additionaly poorlly describe. Lack of information about Sun's movement module.
In the Results the aggregation of results and references to them are strongly unclear. 

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

This paper presented the energy sums on annual, seasonal and monthly basis at 82 locations covering all Saudi Arabia. It also gives a discussion for the differences among solar collectors on horizontal, fixed-tilt, 1-axis and 2-axis systems. The information is valuable to some solar energy scientists or engineers. I suggested this paper can be accepted. However, some typing errors in line 371 and 433 should be corrected before publication.   

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

This article presents the solar potential in Saudi Arabia for flat-plate surfaces varying their slope. The article is well structured, and I believe is suitable to be published in Applied Sciences. However, there are some small issues that need to be fixed before to be accepted.

For example.

The notation used for the references is not correct.

In several parts of the document are used quotation marks. However, it is not clear if it is a direct quote, or it has another meaning. Please remove quotation marks when it is not necessary. (see line 101, 265, 283, and more)

There is a format problem in line 215

The conclusions are too long.

Author Response

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Reviewer 4 Report

Kambezidis et al. report about “Solar Potential in Saudi Arabia for Flat-Plate Surfaces of Varying Tilt Tracking the Sun”. The authors collected solar radiation data from various locations at Saudi Arabia to calculate annual solar energy distribution for static and one and two axis tilt tracking the sun. The information is interesting for planning future solar power plants, however the scientific soundness is very low and does not meet the requirements for a scientific research journal. Doing simple geometric calculations and fit some data points is too less effort for a research paper. Thus the manuscript cannot be recommended for publication in “Applied Sciences”.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

In my opinion, the solar radiation model used when considering tracking systems will reflect significant error. Additionally, there are calculations using more accurate models in the database the authors used.
The lack of presentation of models describing the motion of the solar tracking surface also makes it difficult to determine the correctness of the calculations presented. 
It is still not explained why the results presented were aggregated across all regions, this presentation of the results strongly obscures the perception of the results.

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Publish as is!

Author Response

We thank Reviewer 4 for his/her efforts in improving the quality of the article. We have gone through the whole manuscript and made some minor English language corrections.

Round 3

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for replies. I'm wating for study with anisotropy model.