Identifying Potential Wind Energy Harvesting Sites for Sustainable Development of Debere Berhan Town, Ethiopia
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2021-06
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
A.A.U
Abstract
In the modern world, renewable energy resources are a very important segment and critical input for the development of human life which provides energy for electricity. Renewable energy resources are naturally refilled by nature with short time such as wind, sunlight, and others, and have less impact on the environment. Site selection is an important step for the utilization of those renewable resources. The method of primary and secondary data analysis by using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) was used for site selection using ArcGIS as a tool. The potential sites for wind energy harvesting take into account four major groups (topographic, technical, environmental, and socio-economic aspects of wind farm development) and eight sub-criteria groups (slope, wind speed, distance from existing power lines, rivers, LULC, distance from urban areas, distance from roads, and wetland). All the layers and datasets are weighted and overlayed to determine weights of sitting criteria to select the best and feasible site according to their importance for the wind farm site selection. The most suitable areas both inside and around Debere Berhan town have been presented on the wind farm suitability map and windy map of Debere Berhan town. From the total study area around Debere Berhan town, 31.4 % is most suitable for wind energy harvesting which covers about 2,507.2 ha of land, and from this area, approximately the estimated energy is about 60.18 MW. Locations for urban wind energy also identified inside Debere Berhan town which covers about 189.2 ha of land in four different places and these areas can be used as building-integrated wind turbine (BIWT) for energy harvesting within the town and about 3.82 MW of energy is estimated from urban wind energy resource within Debere Berhan town. Finally, the urban design plan for the wind farm of Debere Berhan town is developed and mapped.
Description
Keywords
Energy, Windfarm, Wind Speed, Debere Berhan town, Multi-criteria decision making