Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper examines the PV-battery vs. CSP thermal storage in Morocco. It's an interesting paper. I have a few comments. 

1. make the font size bigger for most of the figures. They are now hard to see.
2. the introduction of the calibration of the E4CLIM model against the data in Morocco needs to be improved. This model is from other country, It's quite common that we don't have all the needed data available. Can authors provide more details on the calibration process? what problems did you encounter? how did you solve it?
3. again, the font size of many figures are too small. please increase the font size so people don't need to zoom in to see the text in the figure. 
4. also, please explain the contributions of this paper before the second section methodology. 
5. If you are reusing figures from other sources, please get the permission, not only citing the source.
6. In Figure 12, left. Why do you have percentage for the first 3 numbers, but not for the remaining?

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is acceptable in its current form. 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors investigate the optimization problem regarding the mix of renewable energy sources in Morocco. This is a follow up study of an article published recently by the same authors. In the present study, it is analyzed how the efficiency of photovoltaic systems can be enhanced by battery storage. In general, photovoltaic energy is cost effective, but there is the disadvantage that the demand of energy increases at a time when the sun does not shine. This problem may be solved by battery storage of electricity, but the costs of the batteries must be considered in the optimization problem. The authors employ a bi-objective optimization, thereby minimizing the costs and the risk that the demand exceeds the available amount of electricity.

The scientific level of this study is very high. But the methodology is very similar as in the previous study of the same authors cited as reference [51]. Nevertheless, new results are presented, and therefore I recommend that this article should be accepted for publication.

Minor correction: I suggest that the readability of block diagrams shown in Figures 1, and 3 should be improved (the font size of letters should be increased).

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf