` i SOLAR ENERGY RESOURCE MAPPING, SITE SUITABILITY AND TECHNOECONOMIC FEASIBILITY ANALYSIS FOR UTILITY SCALE PHOTOVOLTAIC POWER PLANT IN AFGHANISTAN

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.