Site Selection of Wind Turbines Based on Space Environmental Assessment (Case study: Khorasan Razavi)

Increasing population and life standards causes fossil fuel consumption to increase. Fossil fuels consumption has major negative impacts on the environment. Therefore، many countries around the world have included renewable energy systems (RES) in their future energy plans so that they can produce reliable and environmentally friendly energy. The aim of this study is to create a decision support system for site selection of wind turbines using Geographic Information System (GIS) tools. Wind energy potential and environmental fitness/acceptability are used as decision criteria for the site selection process. Fuzzy environmental objectives such as “Acceptable in terms of noise level’’، ‘‘Acceptable in terms of bird habitat’’، ‘‘Acceptable in terms of safety and aesthetics’’ and ‘‘Safe in terms of natural reserves’’ associated with wind turbines are identified based on previous research and each of these objectives are represented by a fuzzy set. Individual satisfaction degree of each of these environmental objectives for each grid is calculated. Then these individual satisfactions are aggregated into an overall satisfaction degree using various aggregator operators such as ‘‘and’’، ‘‘or’’، and ‘‘order weighted averaging. Finally، map of environmental fitness is developed in GIS environment by using these overall satisfaction degrees.