Abstract
Erratic power supply is a serious problem to most part of Rivers State, Nigeria in general and Ikwerre Local Government Area in particular. This situation does not only halt social and economic development of the area but has also given birth to other social vices such as arm robbery, kidnapping, and other criminal activities. Renewable energy is an alternative form of energy aim at alleviating the problems of erratic power supply. It is generally considered as the cleanest form of energy. Solar photovoltaic is a type of renewable energy which derived its energy from the sun. The construction of solar plant requires the selection of suitable location for the generation of optimal energy. The purpose of the study is to determine suitable locations in Ikwerre Local Government Area, Rivers State to site solar photovoltaic plant using multi-criteria analysis (MCA) in ESRI’s ArcGIS. The dataset used for the determination of the optimal sites include; solar radiation and slope map produced from digital terrain model (DTM), pipeline, road network, land use/ cover map, soil map, and settlement. The datasets were converted to raster and reclassed into six classes for the purpose of data integration. The datasets were weighted according to their relative importance in the weighted overlay tool. Solar radiation has the highest percentage influence 40, followed by proximity to pipeline and road network which are 15 each. The model produced four suitability classes ranging from poorly suitable to highly suitable class. Highly suitable class has an area of 10139.87ha with 548 polygons, representing 15.78% of the study area. Further analysis was carried out using highly suitable class and settlement layer, it was found that three (3) optimal sites were obtained as most suitable for sitting solar plant. The three polygons were located in the region with very high solar radiation, accessible to road and away from built-up areas. The above results suggest the usefulness of GIS in site selection, particularly in sitting solar photovoltaic plant. It is recommended that further study should include transmission line which was completely omitted in this analysis due to inability to get the shapefile from the ministry of power.
Highlights
Renewable energy (RE) is an alternative form to the well known non-renewable energy such as fossil fuels and nuclear power
The suitability map for solar power plant was produced by combining the factors and the map shown in figure 4.1h
Seven datasets namely; solar radiation, slope, soil, pipeline, road, land use/ cover and settlement data were used in the selection of suitable sites for solar farm
Summary
Renewable energy (RE) is an alternative form to the well known non-renewable energy such as fossil fuels and nuclear power. Define as energy that comes from an inexhaustible source [2]. They include; hydropower, solar energy, wind energy, geothermal energy, biomass energy and ocean energy [3]. Its main functions are for power generation for industrial and commercial usage, air and water heating/ cooling, transportation and rural energy services [4]. The technologies are considered as the cleanest source of energy with little or no environmental impacts unlike the conventional energy sources. They provide the following benefits; energy security, climate change mitigation and energy economy. Head Business Development, Office of the Surveyor General, Moscow Road, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
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