Regional Scale wind farm and solar farm suitability assessment using GIS-assisted multi-criteria evaluation

In the context of the Anthropocene, the decoupling of carbon emissions from electricity generation is critical. South Africa has an ageing coal power fleet, which will gradually be decommissioned over the next 30 years. This creates substantial opportunity for a just transition towards a future energy mix with a high renewable energy penetration. Offshore wind technology is a clean electricity generation alternative that presents great power security and decarbonisation opportunity for South Africa. This study estimated the offshore wind energy resource available within South Africa’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), using a geographic information system methodology. The available resource was estimated under four developmental scenarios. This study revealed that South Africa has an annual offshore wind energy production potential of 44.52 TWh at ocean depths of less than 50 m (Scenario 1) and 2 387.08 TWh at depths less than 1 000 m (Scenario 2). Furthermore, a GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation was conducted to determine the most suitable locations for offshore wind farm development within the South African EEZ. The following suitable offshore wind development regions were identified: Richards Bay, KwaDukuza, Durban, and Struis Bay. Based on South Africa’s annual electricity consumption of 297.8 TWh in 2018, OWE could theoretically supply approximately 15% and 800% of South Africa’s annual electricity demand with offshore wind development Scenario 1 and 2 respectively.

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Socially Not Acceptable: Lessons from a Wind Farm Project in St-Valentin, Quebec

Case Studies in the Environment ◽

10.1525/cse.2018.001354 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 1-10 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Louis Simard

Keyword(s):

Wind Farm ◽

Social Acceptance ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Lessons Learned ◽

Social Acceptability ◽

Consultation Process ◽

The Public ◽

New Public ◽

Ongoing Relationship ◽

The Government

Social acceptability appears as a new public norm that major projects must meet in order to be authorized and realized. This article proposes to analyze the case of a wind farm project in the municipality of St-Valentin, Quebec, Canada near the border with Vermont, which was cancelled by the government due to lack of social acceptance, in order to illustrate the importance of this norm today. The project involved the construction of 25 turbines to generate 52 MW of power. Launched in 2006, the project was already significantly under way by 2008; however, in 2011, the government permanently shelved it. Through a combination of document analysis and 11 interviews, we identified the main reasons for the lack of social acceptability: lack of upstream consultation from the developer and wrong scale planned for the consultation process, controversies surrounding the public decision-making process, profound contradictions between the community’s values and interests and the nature of the project, and perceptions of the impacts on the landscape and conflicting uses. For better project social acceptability, lessons learned from this case suggest from a procedural perspective opting for broad, open, and early consultation, prioritizing a regional scale for the approach and acting with transparency, clear rules and a concern for building an ongoing relationship with stakeholders. From a more substantive perspective, our analysis points to the importance of factoring in the level of compatibility between the nature of the project and the values and interests shared by stakeholders in the community, and planning potential modifications to adapt the project to the context in light of their demands.

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Combining AHP and TOPSIS Methods to Evaluate Investment for Wind Farm Construction

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.860-863.280 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 860-863 ◽

pp. 280-286 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Xiang Feng Zhang

Keyword(s):

Alternative Energy ◽

Wind Farm ◽

Evaluation Method ◽

Evaluation Criteria ◽

Wind Farms ◽

Investment Strategy ◽

Analytic Hierarchy ◽

Multi Criteria Evaluation ◽

Order Preference ◽

Rational Investment

Wind is one of the most promising sources of alternative energy. The construction of wind farms grows quickly in China. It is necessary for stakeholders to estimate investment costs and make good decisions on a wind power project by making a budget for the investment. However, the identification of rational investment practices is technically challenging because of the lack of scientific tools to evaluate optimal decisions. A multi-criteria evaluation method was proposed to select rational investment strategy for wind farm construction. The method is based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) together with a technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS). A decision problem hierarchy with three layers were investigated. The top layer is an objective layer for evaluating the investment rationality. The intermediate layer includes three evaluation criteria, that is, configuration of wind turbine generator systems, physical environment and social environment. Some relative and important indicators for each criterion are in the low layer. The evaluation results illustrate that the proposed method is practical and helpful to indentify the investment rationality for wind farms.

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Regional Suitability Assessment for the Mouseear Hawkweed (Hieracium pilosella) Invasion in Patagonian Rangelands

Invasive Plant Science and Management ◽

10.1614/ipsm-d-16-00037.1 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 9 (4) ◽

pp. 242-251 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ruth B. Rauber ◽

Pablo A. Cipriotti ◽

Marta B. Collantes ◽

Juan P. Martini ◽

Enrique Frers

Keyword(s):

Management Practices ◽

Linear Models ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Soil Disturbance ◽

Field Surveys ◽

Suitability Assessment ◽

Hieracium Pilosella ◽

Critical Areas ◽

High Level ◽

The Relationship

Several studies have been carried out to evaluate the main drivers behind biological invasions and their ecological consequences. Nevertheless, it is still extremely difficult to acquire a full understanding of the invasion process due to its high level of complexity. The problems that complicate invasion studies are low detection during the early stages of invasion, and the high survey cost of working over large, inaccessible, and rugged areas. The studies that develop efficient tools to reduce costs and time will help to control or mitigate the invaders' damaging effects. Hieracium pilosella is an aggressive invader of grasslands worldwide. The aim of this work was to conduct a regional assessment for the suitability of H. pilosella invasion in the Fuegian Steppe by combining field surveys, spatial modeling, and geographic information system tools. We recorded the invader cover in 167 sample sites and we determined the relationship between environmental variables and the probability of invasion. This was carried out by the selection of alternative generalized linear models. The best model indicates that disturbance and plant community were the main drivers to predict invasion suitability on a regional scale. Therefore, these two variables were used as main inputs to construct a regional invasion suitability map, which identifies the most critical areas for prevention, control, and further monitoring. This approach corresponds to a tool that permits us to evaluate the suitability of invasion even over large and inaccessible areas. The results especially warn about soil disturbance associated with usual management practices in Fuegian rangelands.

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Study on the Assessment of Land Ecological Suitability in Urban Connecting Band Based on the Method of “Entropy Weight-Geographic Information System”

Advanced Materials Research ◽

10.4028/www.scientific.net/amr.798-799.1178 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 798-799 ◽

pp. 1178-1181

Author(s):

Zhi Hong Liu ◽

Ling Xu

Keyword(s):

Information System ◽

Geographic Information System ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Geographic Information ◽

Land Suitability ◽

Entropy Weight ◽

Irrigation Area ◽

Suitability Assessment ◽

Land Suitability Assessment ◽

Ecological Suitability

Taking the connecting band of urban integration as study area, based on an appropriate index system, the method of Entropy Weight-Geographic Information System (GIS) was employed to carry out the land suitability assessment at a regional scale. Shenyang Irrigation Area (SIA) was taken as the practical example. It was found that the method was reasonable to assess the land suitability and the assessment results can be used to support land planning in a flexible way.

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Evaluation of Latvian Power System Static Stability According to a New Development Strategy until 2025

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13126860 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (12) ◽

pp. 6860

Author(s):

Inga Zicmane ◽

Sergey Kovalenko ◽

Svetlana Beryozkina ◽

Kristina Berzina ◽

Aleksejs Sobolevskis

Keyword(s):

Power System ◽

Development Strategy ◽

Wind Farm ◽

Free Market ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Static Stability ◽

Electric Power System ◽

Energy Integration ◽

Operating Modes ◽

Development Scenarios

The current stage of world energy development is characterized by the creation of powerful, territorially unified energy systems under free market conditions as well as renewable energy integration. Such transactions challenge networks’ configurations and their operating modes. Electric power system (EPS) static stability could be considered one of the primary targets in this regard. The aim of this study was to evaluate the undergoing and expected modernization of the Latvian EPS in terms of static stability in a regional scale-based case study. In order to define static stability, a method based on a bus admittance matrix was proposed. A simplified Latvian EPS model was developed and assessed for the following three modes: past (2017), current (2020), and planned (2025), taking into account the Baltic States’ planned development scenarios including large wind farm integration. The evaluation of computation results provided an opportunity to visually inspect changes in the EPS’ sensitive elements such as lines and nodes. As a result, positive changes were observed (decrease of several weak points) for the planned mode (2025) as compared to the past mode (2017) under the considered modernization scenario. The detailed analysis and results are presented in the article.

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Quantitative Land Suitability Mapping for Crop Cultivation

Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina ◽

10.26552/com.c.2018.3.77-83 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 20 (3) ◽

pp. 77-83

Author(s):

Svitlana Kokhan ◽

Antonina Moskalenko ◽

Oleg Drozdivskyi

Keyword(s):

Knowledge Base ◽

Geographical Information Systems ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Land Suitability ◽

Geographical Information ◽

Crop Cultivation ◽

Suitability Assessment ◽

Crop Suitability ◽

Multi Criteria Evaluation ◽

Gis Environment

Developing the structure of geodatabase and knowledge base to provide quantitative mapping of land suitability for cultivation the main crops has been shown in the research. The general model and catalogs of knowledge base were designed that are structuring and formalizing information for creating thematic and complex maps and geomodels. The real world spatial problems give rise to multi-criteria decision-making based on geographical information systems (GIS). The GIS environment provides both aggregation and spatial analysis of various georeferenced data. In this paper, the two approaches of multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) are represented - overlaying with the AND operation and the lowest score assignment on one criterion. An example of multi-attribute decision analysis is done using criteria for the crop suitability assessment. A comparison of those two approaches has been made, based on results of the land-use suitability mapping for the study crops - winter wheat, sunflower and corn. The results demonstrated that at certain locations, a range of criteria values, according to the AND operations had the lower applicability and less flexibility than according to the second approach, based on the lowest score assignment on one criterion. Designed maps characterize the threshold status of the soil quality to provide yields of studied crops on certain areas. A set of land suitability maps, designed as quantitative models of integration of environmental, soil and climatic conditions, would be very effective to manage the complex decisions under the crop cultivation.

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Evaluation of ERA5, MERRA-2, COSMO-REA6, NEWA and AROME to simulate wind power production over France

Advances in Science and Research ◽

10.5194/asr-17-63-2020 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 17 ◽

pp. 63-77 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Bénédicte Jourdier

Keyword(s):

Wind Speed ◽

Wind Power ◽

Wind Farm ◽

Regional Scale ◽

Power Production ◽

Local Scale ◽

Electric System ◽

Wind Speeds ◽

Diurnal Cycles ◽

Nwp Model

Abstract. As variable renewable energies are developing, their impacts on the electric system are growing. To anticipate these impacts, prospective studies may use wind power production simulations in the form of 1 h or 30 min time series that are often based on reanalysis wind-speed data. The purpose of this study is to assess how several wind-speed datasets are performing when used to simulate wind-power production at the local scale, when no observation is available to use bias correction methods. The study evaluates two global reanalysis (MERRA-2 from NASA and ERA5 from ECMWF), two high-resolution models (COSMO-REA6 reanalysis from DWD, AROME NWP model from Météo-France) and the New European Wind Atlas mesoscale data. The study is conducted over continental France. In a first part, wind-speed measurements (between 55 and 100 m above ground) at eight locations are directly compared to modelled wind speeds. In a second part, 30 min wind-power productions are simulated for every wind farm in France and compared to two open datasets of observed production published by the distribution and transmission system operators, either at the local scale in terms of annual bias, or aggregated at the regional scale, in terms of bias, correlations and diurnal cycles. ERA5 is very skilled, despite its low resolution compared to the regional models, but it underestimates wind speeds, especially in mountainous areas. AROME and COSMO-REA6 have better skills in complex areas and have generally low biases. MERRA-2 and NEWA have large biases and overestimate wind speeds especially at night. Several problems affecting diurnal cycles are detected in ERA5 and COSMO-REA6.

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Multi-Criteria Fuzzy Evaluation of the Planned Offshore Wind Farm Investments in Poland

Energies ◽

10.3390/en14040978 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 14 (4) ◽

pp. 978

Author(s):

Paweł Ziemba

Keyword(s):

Renewable Energy ◽

Wind Farm ◽

Renewable Energy Sources ◽

Wind Farms ◽

Offshore Wind ◽

Fuzzy Evaluation ◽

Offshore Wind Farms ◽

Multi Criteria Evaluation ◽

Total Capacity ◽

Polish Economy

In recent years, the dynamic development of renewable energy has been visible all over the world, including Poland. Wind energy is one of the most used renewable energy sources. In Poland, by 2030, it is planned to commission at least six offshore wind farms with a total capacity of 3.8 GW. It is estimated that these investments will increase Poland’s GDP by approximately PLN 60 billion and increase tax revenues by PLN 15 billion. Therefore, they could be a strong stimulus for the development of the Polish economy and may be of great importance in recovering from the crisis caused by the economic constraints related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of the article is a multi-criteria evaluation of the investments planned in Poland in offshore wind farms and identification of potentially the most economically effective investments. To account for the uncertainty in this decision problem, a modified fuzzy Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method was used and a comprehensive sensitivity analysis was performed. As a result of the research, a ranking of the considered projects was constructed and the most preferred investments were identified. Moreover, it has been shown that all the investments considered are justified and recommended.

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