Land suitability analysis for solar farms exploitation using the GIS and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) – a case study of Morocco

Abstract

Given Morocco’s geographical position and climatic conditions, solar energy will supply a large portion of the country’s energy demand. In this paper, the suitability of Moroccan lands for hosting Solar Power Plants was studied using the combination of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Analytical Hierarchy Method (AHP). The multi-criteria decision framework integrates technical, socio-economic and environmental constraints. For this purpose, a GIS database was created using layers from various sources. In addition, since the potential of Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) is the most relevant criterion for the selection of solar farms, a high-quality solar satellite map with a spatial resolution of 0.27 km was used, covering a period from 1994 to 2018. Obtained results show a great potential for solar energy development in Morocco, represented by the availability of 90% of areas. In fact, the resulting map was classified into 6 different classes, namely: