Model: Case of Adama Sub-Watershed in Upper Awash Valley

Abstract

One of the most significant obstacles to develop wind power is land use restrictions. Development of wind power plants requires land with sufficient wind resources, proximity to the power grid, and compatibility with environmental and regulatory requirements. This study focus on GIS based multi criteria wind farm site selection. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been widely used to identify the suitable wind farm locations. In this study, a GIS-based multi-criteria approach was developed to identify the areas that are best suited to Adama II wind farm and the results were spatially correlated with the existing wind mills. 10 criteria’s were adopted in this method, including distance to roads, distance to transmission lines, engineering geology, wind potential, land use, Settlement, slope, elevation, forest and hydrology. The suitability of wind farm site selection was modeled by a weighted overlay and Boolean overlay of geospatial layers corresponding to these criteria using Arc GIS model builder. The final wind farm site suitability map reveals that the study area was divided into four different suitability categories. The area under high suitable, more suitable, moderate and not suitable lands stand at 38%, 10%, 16 and 36 %, respectively. The results indicates that the method is capable of identifying locations highly suited for wind farm site. The methods and the result of the study could help identify suitable wind farm locations in other areas across the country.