GIS BASED SOLAR POWER PLANTS SITE SELECTION USING ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS (AHP) IN ISTANBUL, TURKEY

Abstract. Today, countries are shifting their energy policies towards to renewable energy sources. The main reasons for this can be summarized as the reduction of fossil fuel resources, resulting in cost increase and their harmful effect on the ecological balance. Since renewable energy sources are both economical and eco-friendly, for countries which have high solar energy potential such as Turkey, it is reasonable to direct their energy policies to solar energy which is a renewable energy source.

In this study, the development of renewable energy legislation in Turkey, from past to present has been examined and implementation steps for the licenced and unlicensed generation of electricity from solar energy have been introduced. Ten impact factors have been identified as the first step for the implementation of the solar power plant site selection in Istanbul, which was determined as the pilot region. Impact factors weighted using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. Concurrently, the weights of these determined impact factors were compared with the weights obtained by evaluating the results of the “Evaluation of Solar Energy Power Plant Site Selection Factors” survey conducted during the study. After obtaining the weights, the relevant data were collected and the necessary analyses were performed with the help of the GIS software and the most suitable places were provided for the solar power plant for Istanbul.