THE GRAAL project

GRAAL logo

GRAAL was a project using a heliostat field for solar-energy
production at the Plataforma Solar de Almeria - located in the
Spanish Sierra Nevada - to collect flashes of Cherenkov light
during the night. The light flashes are recorded and stored on computers.
Their properties are compared with a detailed modeling of the processes
leading to light emission in the atmosphere. The partner web-site of GRAAL
is GRAAL at Universidad Complutense.

GRAAL was performed by the GRAAL collaboration - mainly by two teams from the Max-Planck-Institute for Physics in Munich (Dr. Rainer Plaga), the Universidad Complutense in Madrid (Prof. Fernando Arqueros) in the period 1998-2001.
Important further contributions came from the university of Seville, Almeria and the Plataforma Solar in Tabernas, a Spanish CIEMAT research institute for solar thermal concentrating technologies.
The project was further supported by the German DFG, the Spanish CICYT and
the European Union's EC-DGXII's 'Improving Human Potential' program.
 

For further information click on:

CESA-1 heliostat mirror field (PSA) in GRAAL configuration