Designing and implementing a location-based model to identify areas suitable for multi-renewable energy development for supplying electricity to agricultural wells

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to design and implement a spatial model to identify optimal areas for energy sources (solar power plant (SPS), wind turbine generator (WTG), Distributed Gas Turbine-Generators (DGTG), and direct connection to power distribution system (PDS) to supply electricity to agricultural wells using a combination of data-driven methods and geographic information system (GIS). This study used 13 spatial criteria to identify suitable areas for SPS, 11 for WTG, 11 for DGTG, and 3 for PDS. A combination of data-driven decision-making (DDDM) and GIS was used for data analysis. The results of the present study showed that in the pilot study area, solar energy has a higher potential than other energies. Also, the results of the sensitivity analysis showed that changing the weight of the criteria has no significant effect on the model outputs and clearly proves the stability of the proposed model. The hybrid power plant scenarios showed that had the highest number of pixels suitable for development were associated with double and triple hybrid power solutions generator, respectively. These were hybrid SPS and DGTG and hybrid SPS, PDS, and DGTG systems.