Algeria is blessed with a very important renewable, and more particularly solar, energy potential. This potential opens for Algeria reel opportunities to cope with the increasing energy demand and the growing environmental problems link to the use of fossil fuel. In order to develop and to promote concrete actions in the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency, Algeria has introduced a national daring program for the period 2011-2030. In this program, solar energy, and more particularly solar thermal energy plays an important role. In this paper, the potential of direct solar irradiance in Algeria and the performance of solar parabolic trough collector (PTC) are estimated under the climate conditions of the country. These two factors are treated as they play an important role in the design of solar thermal plant. In order to determine the most promising solar sites in Algeria, monthly mean daily direct solar radiation have been estimated and compared for different locations corresponding to different climatic region. Different tilted and tracking collectors are considered so as to determine the most efficient system for the PTC. In order to evaluate the performance of a tracking solar parabolic trough collector, a heat transfer model is developed. The receiver, heat collector element (HCE), is divided into several segments and heat balance is applied in each segment over a section of the solar receiver. Different oils are considered to determine the thermal performances of the heat transfer fluid (HTF). Then, the HTF temperature and heat gain evolutions are compared under the topographical and climatic conditions. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.