Identification of suitable sites for large‐scale photovoltaic installations through a geographic information system and analytical hierarchy process combination: A case study in Marrakesh‐Safi region, Morocco

Abstract

In this paper, an assessment of the large-scale photovoltaic (PV) potential in the region of Marrakesh-Safi, Morocco, has been carried out. Considering the significant solar resources that the country possesses, the purpose of this investigation was to highlight suitable sites for a PV power plant. To this end, multicriteria decision making (MCDM) analysis and geographic information system (GIS) tools were combined. Several criteria were taken into account, namely, the constraints related to the system installation and environmental conditions. To the best of our knowledge, no study has considered the wind speed as a criterion for PV site selection. Such a criterion has a cooling effect on the technology itself and also affects the stability of the PV panel mounting system. Results reveal that 74% of the study area was considered suitable to host PV power plants. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) analysis was conducted to evaluate the adopted criteria and a ranking map was generated for the appropriate surface using GIS tools. Results demonstrate that 24.3% of the suitable area was qualified as highly suitable according to calculations. These findings help stakeholders to select the highest ranked sites, ensuring a high score from a technical and economic point of view.

A spatial perspective on renewable energy optimization: Case study of southern Tunisia Using GIS and multicriteria decision making

“…A key benefit of employing the AHP is its adaptability in managing complex issues by breaking them down into more manageable components. Additionally, it accommodates both quantitative and qualitative data while ensuring consistency through validation procedures (Al Garni et al, 2016; Ouchani et al, 2020). Therefore, considering these advantages, the AHP approach has been selected for this article.…”

An approach for selecting optimal locations for electric vehicle solar charging stations

“…Greece AHP, TOPSIS [11] Khuzestan AHP, fuzzy Boolean logic [27] Turkey AHP [22,24,[28][29][30][31][32] Morocco AHP [33][34][35] China AHP [36] Israel AHP [37] Algeria AHP, EQual Weighted (EQW), Best Worst Method (BWM) [15,[38][39][40] Peru AHP [41] Afghanistan AHP, ANP [42] Iraq AHP, Boolean AHP [8,43] Iran AHP, fuzzy logic, weighted linear Combination (WLC) [44] Thailand AHP [45] Ethiopia AHP [46] Egypt AHP [47] Ireland AHP [48] Chile AHP, ordered weighted averaging [10] Philippines AHP [25] Tanzania AHP [49] Saudi Arabia AHP [23] T A B L E 3 Summary of studies on EVCS site selection using GIS and AHP.…”

Unlocking renewable energy potential: A case study of solar and wind site selection in the Kasserine region, central‐western Tunisia

“…Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) [25,26,[29][30][31] Average Wind Speed [25,26,29,30,32] Wind power density [26,[33][34][35] Percentage of windy days [33] Ambient temperature [31,[36][37][38] Slope [26,31,32,34,36] Aspect [20,37,39] Distance to grid lines [20,21,26,31,32] Distance to major roads [20,21,26,31,32] Distance to residential areas [20,21,26,31,32] Elevation [21,25,29,30,32] Land use [21,25,[29]…”