[en] The conditions for solar energy utilization in the USSR are not too favorable. Only in the country's southern regions is there sufficient insolation to make solar energy utilization economical. In higher latitudes only seasonable use of solar energy is reasonable. Up to now, the main application of solar energy was to produce low temperature heat for hot water production, drying of agricultural goods, space heating and thermal treating of concrete. A substantial part of the solar heating installations is flat plate solar collectors. The total installed area of solar collectors slightly exceeds 100,000 m². The collectors are produced by industry, as well as by small enterprises. In some cases selective coatings are used over the absorber plates; black nickel or chromium is the main coating material. Recently, new projects were launched to develop and produce advanced collectors with enhanced efficiency and reliability. Substantial progress has been made in the USSR in developing and producing photovoltaic cells, mainly for space applications. Terrestrial applications of photovoltaic is only in the very early stage. About 100 Kw of photovoltaic cells are produced annually in the USSR, based on mono or polycrystalline silicon. Some experimental photovoltaic-arrays in the range of several tenth of Kw are installed in different places. Research and development work is carried out to produce thin film cells. Effort are in progress to construct automated production lines for 1 MW per year of crystalline and amorphous silicon. In the Crimea, a solar power plant SES-5 (5 MW peak power) was commissioned some years ago. The plant is of a tower type, with a circular helioscope field. The plants working fluid is steam. The experienced gained demonstrates that this design concept has several disadvantages. The cost of electricity produced by such type plants extremely high. Recently, alternative types of solar power plants have been under development, in particular, a project to construct a MW parabolic through plant. A combination of thermal solar with photovoltaic also has been investigated, to use solar energy in a cogeneration mode. (author)