GIS based site determination model for productive solar farm: A case study in Eskişehir

Abstract

It is the most known word throughout the human-being's long journey in this planet: ENERGY. Even now, the energy is necessity for us. The world is now in quest of new energy resources because of the decrement of environmental energy resources. Solar energy is the most abundant permanent energy resource on earth and it is available for use in its direct (solar radiation) and indirect (wind, biomass, hydro, ocean etc.) forms. This commentary is limited to the direct use of solar radiation, the earth's prime energy resource (World Energy Council, 2007). It is all free and nature-friendly energy resource. Today's technology allows us to use that sort of energy efficiently, especially for the some countries whose have high sunlight availability. Turkey is one of the countries that are strongly exposed to direct sunlight during the year due to its geographical location. Thus, it is highly significant to utilize kind of energy effectively and efficiently. Many methods are available to produce electricity from solar power by using varying equipment and the latest point reached is the solar farms. These farms are set of thousands of photovoltaic solar panels located in order to use them to convert the direct sunlight to electric power. In addition, a solar cell is a member of solar panel and we bring together solar panels it constitutes solar farms. Thus, if the right place should be chosen for solar farms in order to get the ability to produce enough electric energy for a city, a village or a specific place where. In this study, the site selection process for a productive solar farm in Eskişehir discussed. Geographic Information System (GIS) is used to select and determine the suitable place to settle the solar farm. Geographical information system is best method to analyze and solve mentioned method. Some vital parameters are used such as energy potential, land characteristics, distance to fault zone, roads, settlement etc. By overlaying these different types of spatial data and using GIS the most suitable place to set the solar farm in Eskişehir determined. ESRI ArcGIS 10 is used to store data, query and analyze in this study and a useful tool has been created with Model Builder tool. Copyright © 2011 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE).