Optimal Solar Farm Site Selection using GIS and Analytic Hierarchy Process

Solar energy has become an important source of clean energy due to the increasing global demand for electricity. The selection of sites for solar power plants is necessary for large-scale projects, as it depends on key factors such as quality of terrain, solar irradiance, proximity to transmission lines, land use, slope and distance from roads and residential areas. The paper gives a solution to identify optimal locations for solar farms by using GIS and AHP within the selected study area. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) is a widely used multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method to calculate the weights for identified environmental and economic factors. It is used to assign weights to the criteria and calculate a land suitability index (LSI) for evaluating potential sites. The LSI model categorizes sites into four groups: “low suitable”, “moderately suitable”, “Suitable” and “best suitable”. The result shows the study area is classified as low suitability by ‘red’, while ‘orange’ indicates moderate suitability. Additionally, blue’ indicates a suitable area, and ‘green’ shows the best-suited area for solar farms.