GIS based multi-criteria decision making for solar hydrogen production sites selection in Algeria

Abstract

Hydrogen production from renewable energy sources appears to be an interesting solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring the energy security supply. This paper develops an integrated framework to evaluate land suitability for hydrogen production from solar energy site selection that combines multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) with geographical information systems (GIS); an application of the proposed framework for Algerian country. In GIS two types of criteria will be taken: constraints and weighting criteria. Constraints criteria will make it possible to reduce the area of study by discarding those areas that prevent the implementation of installing solar hydrogen production systems. These criteria will be obtained from the legislation (land use, water bodies, waterways, roads, railways, power lines, and also their buffer around them). Weighting criteria will be chosen according to the objective to be reached, in this case they will be the hydrogen demand, potential solar hydrogen production, digital elevation models (DEMs), slope, proximity to roads, railways, and power lines. Through the use of MCDM the criteria mentioned will be weighted in order to evaluate potential sites to locate a solar hydrogen production installation system. Analysis and calculation of the weights of these criteria will be conducted using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). As a result, the final index model was grouped into four categories as “very low suitability”, “low suitability”, “moderate suitability” and “high suitability” with a manual interval classification method. The results indicate that 10.34% (246,272.02 km2), of the study area has very low suitability, 60.75% (1,446,907.65 km2) has low suitability, 6.68% (159,100.3 km2) has moderate suitability and 0.49% (11,669.21 km2) has high suitability for a solar-powered hydrogen production installation system. The other 21.74% (517,790.5 km2) of the study area is not suitable for such projects. The sensitivity analysis highlights that the suitable sites for solar hydrogen production installation system are dependent on the weights of the criteria that influence the decision. The MCDM methodology integrated with GIS is a powerful tool for effective evaluation of the solar-powered hydrogen production sites selection.