Abstract:
For deployment of solar power plant, it is essential to identify suitable and feasible location
for plant installation. Suitability and economic feasibility analysis incorporating
meteorological, land use, technoeconomic and environmental parameters. in this study at first
viability of Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI), temperature and wind speed datasets of
Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) are
investigated at different location and timestamps across the study area, Global Horizontal
Irradiance and temperature highly correlate >95% with ground data whereas wind speed
show weak correlation, after the validation, annual Global Horizontal Irradiance map is
generated for Afghanistan from MERRA-2 re-analysis monthly averaged data, its concluded
that 100 % of land area has solar radiation greater than cut-off limit (1400 KWh/m2/year),
high solar resource potential is available in south and south-eastern and south-western regions
of the country.
The most suitable sites for photovoltaic (PV) power plants installation are determined in the
country based on Multi Criteria Decision Making (MCDM), Analytical Hierarchy Process
(AHP) method integrated with Geographic Information System (GIS) tool, incorporating
levelized cost of electricity, land use and land cover, road network, transmission lines,
protected area, and water stress area. Result map demonstrating that the high suitable sites are
located near the transmission lines where solar radiation is high, and temperature is relatively
low.
Techno-economic feasibility assessment is performed for 50MW power plant in selected
point in the central province of Bamayan - Afghanistan constituting highly suitable site,
different mounting systems including fixed tilt, single axis and dual axis and two types of
panels materials poly crystalline silicon and mono crystalline silicon are investigated, the
result is showing that all combination are economically feasible and deploying single axis
polycrystalline silicon system is most financially acceptable and economically profitable
option.
