The paper focuses on the following items: climatological data in Syria; design approaches for village PV systems; the installed Abu Sorra PV systems; the installed El Mucherfeh PV systems; evaluation of the installed PV systems; experience gained; social acceptance of the PV systems by users; and comparison between centralized and decentralized PV systems. The main conclusions are : (1) the acceptance by users of a.c. solar electricity (centralized system users) is much more than those of d.c. current (decentralized system users), because of the advantage of using conventional a.c, appliances; (2) the overall efficiency of the centralized PV system is 20% less than the efficiency of the individual unit, because of the inverter losses and greater wiring losses; (3) the centralized system is about 24% more expensive than the individual PV systems.
