How to estimate the best location for solar panel farm

Question

Hello everyone,

To begin, I need a little assistance. I'm just learning how to use ArcGIS Pro to explore solar possibilities.

Could you please teach me how to determine the best land allocation for solar panel farms?

If you could give me links to tutorials, videos, or any other documents that I might follow to learn how to use ArcGIS Pro to accomplish that step-by-step, I would be very grateful for your assistance.

With gratitude in advance.

RyanDeBruyn · Answer

@NadaKadhim

ArcGIS Pro has the Solar Radiation Tools you can use to analyze and to create an insolation surface from an elevation surface or DSM (digital surface model).  The result of this analysis could be one variable in your Optimal Site analysis for a solar farm.

If you have not yet already discovered these Solar tools.  Here are some links. (Requires Spatial Analyst extension)
https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/spatial-analyst/how-raster-solar-radiation-works.htm
https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/spatial-analyst/raster-solar-radiation.htm

For finding best locations you can look into Weighted Overlay to solve multicriteria problems such as site selection and suitability models
https://pro.arcgis.com/en/pro-app/latest/tool-reference/spatial-analyst/how-weighted-overlay-works.htm

Tutorials:

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/estimate-solar-power-potential/

https://learn.arcgis.com/en/projects/site-a-sustainable-shrimp-farm/

The ArcGIS Spatial Analyst community page has additional resources and is a good place for tool specific questions.

Good luck!

-Ryan

NadaKadhim · Answer

Thank you very much for your response and help!

I just wonder if there are some steps I can follow to determine the best location of the solar fram!

I will highly appreciate it.

LRMInfoSection · Answer

I'm sure you can simulate sun exposure in GIS, I think that would be a good place to start. This sort of thing (ShadeMap - Simulate sun shadows for any time and place on Earth).

From there you could calculate which areas have the most sun throughout the year.