Siting criteria and feasibility analysis for PV power generation projects using road facilities

Abstract

PV power plants have been built by public or private funds along some sections of the Korea Expressways to generate electricity since the early 2010s, but since the national highways have not been allowed to analyze potentials of the solar power generation based on by law or national standards, we aim at setting up new siting criteria to support decision makers to implement solar energy power generation projects on the national highways. This paper presents the formulation of siting criteria for photovoltaic (PV) power generation projects on the national highways in South Korea, which generate and use renewable energy for purposes such as traffic-facility operation. The feasibility of using candidate sites of the potential projects, selected according to the formulated criteria, in future solar highway projects is determined. An investigation of a database of spatial information of unused-highways was conducted. These data were set as the basic inputs for better-selecting with the project site criteria. The final formulated criteria were used to select two candidate sites and simulations of the topographic conditions, solar irradiance, and shade were performed to estimate the power-generation capacities of the candidate sites. In a feasibility analysis, each candidate site demonstrated an electricity-generation capacity more than 1MW. These results can help in establishing PV power generation projects in South Korea using the national highways with a total length of about 140,000km as the objective spatial data in the project-planning stage. Furthermore, it promotes the expansion of renewable energy supply sources in South Korea and elsewhere in the world.