A GIS-MCDA BASED ASSESSMENT FOR SITING WIND FARMS AND ESTIMATION OF THE TECHNICAL GENERATION POTENTIAL FOR WIND POWER IN SERBIA

ABSTRACT

The share of wind power in energy consumption is continuously increasing at the national level as well as global. Many national strategies plan an increase in the installed capacity of wind farms in the future. Accordingly, this paper provides an assessment of spatial suitability for wind farm siting and estimation of wind power potential for the territory of Serbia. The unsuitable areas (75.91% of the territory) are extracted based on sociopolitical, physical, conservation, and pseudo-economic constraints (22 factors). The available land (24.09%) was evaluated applying the multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) in the geographical information system (GIS) environment using several criteria (wind speed, elevation, slope, proximity to roads and power lines, distance from urban areas, land cover). After correction with the suitability factor, the estimated technical generation power potential is 97.57 TWh, i.e. 82.93 TWh with 15% included losses. The most prospective areas for the development of wind projects are the north (Bačka region), northeast (Banat region, along the lower Danube river valley), and east of Serbia (mountains region and Negotinska Krajina region).

KEYWORDS:

• Wind farms
• MCDA
• spatial suitability index
• technical potential
• GIS
• Serbia

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dr. Johannes Sander, general manager of the SANDER + PARTNER, and Ms. Jasmina Vulović, Deputy Director of the Office of KFW Bank in Belgrade, which provided and allowed us to use the Wind Atlas Balkan dataset. Also, the authors want to thank Bojana Milić for providing language help.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (Contract No. 451-03-68/2020-14/200172).