Site selection for solar power plant in Zaporizhia city (Ukraine)

Abstract

Renewable energy from solar power plants is becoming more and more populardue to the depletion of raw materials and reduction of dependence on oil and gas and is alsoharmless to the natural environment. The management and rational use of land resourcesis currently a pressing problem in the world, including in Ukraine. One of the solutionsis the development of technologies for the use of these areas and the establishment of en-vironmentally friendly technologies for reducing air pollution, namely electricity facilities– solar power plants based on the use of photovoltaic panels. Choosing the right locationfor obtaining solar energy depends on many factors and constraints. Optimal location ofsolar farms is important to maximize the beneficial features of projects while minimizingthe negative. A method of finding places in the vicinity of large cities that could be suitablefor installing power plants was developed. The proposed method uses an analytical hierar-chical process, analytical network process, Boolean logic and weighted linear combination.It has been implemented in the QGIS program. The method was successfully used for thecity of Zaporizhia, but it can be directly implemented in any other region. That is why thepresented works constitute a scheme that can be easily used to estimate large areas in orderto optimally choose a place for a solar park in the vicinity of large cities. Such a model canbe very useful for investors to find potential locations for solar energy before conductingdetailed field research.

Keywords

• ahp
• power plants
• multicriteria analysis
• qgis