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Top1. Introduction
Fossil fuels represented the pillar for economic growth for many centuries. Two major types of fossil fuels, oil and coal, are the topmost sorts of energy used, Baumol and Blackman (2010). However, the growing costs for these fuels and the requirements for substitutional new types of energy require to search for alternative sources of renewable energy such as solar and wind energy, Wright, K. W. (2010). Many developing countries, including Egypt, need to use all sources of energy as a source of development in all industrial, agricultural and other sectors. Fortunately, Egypt like many other Arab countries is world-renowned for high amounts of sunshine and a good climate, which makes it a great geographical location for solar energy use in the development of rural areas which have the priority rank in such development.
The development of rural areas is defined as an educational process where a complete integrated system is responsible for the actual application of various and interlocking stages. This system includes specialists and local leaders guided with a clear business development philosophy that aims to serve people and the environment to raise the social and economic level. The development message is not limited to simply increasing agricultural production, both in plant and animal, but extends to a social renaissance of rural areas in all its aspects, which are reflected at the end to the economic and social well-being of the individuals, Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (2020).
A process of providing the counselling to farmers in the countryside is a hard work, it requires a strong guiding system, combining the importance of developing and its advancement. The counselling should be enhanced using new techniques and results of scientific researches and studies. It should work in raising the efficiency of the farmers performance and help them identifying, understanding and absorbing of innovations and their applications.
This illustrates the importance of hard counselling system, which depends on the principles and rules of philosophical guidance and the fact that each community nature has a specific method which is appropriate to provide development services. Moreover, one community may need multiple methods to provide these services, Qeshta (2013).
However, from the point of view of farmers, the development works at the village level are currently haunted by some problems that lie in the severe decline in the human cadres and specialists in terms of their numbers, Shalaby and Mikhaiel (2014). This fact will leverage the need for better counselling leading to the best utilization of the solar power stations in these areas.
The severe shortage of the number of experienced specialists is the major reasons for the lack of the field visits. Hence, the role of scientific research for planning and scheduling the counselling activities at the governorate, centres and local units in villages arise to achieve one common goal which is to reach more targeted people with less-costs.
A new problem which we are going to call the Travelling Consultant Problem (TCP) in network optimization is defined for an experienced group who want to settle on the foremost effective route for visiting and providing advice services for several candidate places. The group begins from a predetermined position and next wants to select the maximum possible number of places within the day working hours. The target of the TCP is to maximize the utilization of daily available time calculated as the total visited places in the chosen route. This definition is somewhat resembling that of both the Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP) and that of the 0-1 Knapsack Problem (0-1 KP) with basic indicated differences between each of them.
The main contributions in this paper can be itemised as follows: