Determining criteria for optimal site selection for solar power plants

Site selection is one of the basic vital decisions in the start-up process, expansion or relocation of businesses of all kinds. Construction of a new industrial system in the form of solar photovoltaic power plant is a major long-term investment, and in this sense determining the location is critical point on the road to success or failure of industrial system. One of the main objectives in industrial site selection is finding the most appropriate site with desired conditions defined by the selection criteria. This work suggests how to define and classify particular criteria considered for solar PV farm siting. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) is proposed as a method to process available technical information to support decisions in many fields, especially in environmental decision making. In some cases, due to the lack of reliable information on the impact of various natural factors on the economic activity related to the use of land resources, the method of expert assessments can be used. The peculiarity of this method is the lack of empirical evidence of the influence of a given factor on the final result of decision-making. In this case the value of separate factor is judged by experts. When applying this method, expert groups are formed of leading specialists, the main influence factors is established, a questionnaire and a scale of criteria are compiled. Level of reliability of the results is assessed by the coefficient of concordance.