Site Suitability Analysis for Photovoltaic Power Plant Using Geographical Information System

Abstract

Among the various renewable energy resources, solar energy potential is vastly and freely available in our country. Solar energy offers a clean, climate-friendly, abundant and inexhaustible energy resource to mankind. The costs of solar energy have been falling rapidly and are entering new areas of competitiveness. Solar Thermal Electricity (STE) and Solar Photo Voltaic Electricity (SPV) are becoming competitive against conventional electricity generation in tropical countries. In conventional methods, site selection based on integrating various performance indicators such as Temperature, DNI, Sunshine hours, Slope, Aspect and Land use are difficult. GIS provides an integrated approach to combine several factors and provides different scenarios for decision making. This paper describes the suitable site selection for installation of photovoltaic power plants using GIS. It involves three stages: the first stage requires the selection of study area based on power crisis in different districts. The second stage includes preparation of the layers such as Direct Normal Irradiance, Temperature, Sun Shine Hours Land use / land cover, Slope and Aspect for study area and at final stage weights for each layer is calculated with the help of Analytical Hierarchy Process and suitable sites for installation of photovoltaic power plants are derived using suitability analysis in GIS environment.