A Review of the Criteria for Locating of Solar Power Plants in Iran

The environmental protection through the control of pollution and particularly the emissions of gasses in the atmosphere still remains a major concern to the whole of the international community. So indicating proper alternative sources of energy is an essential affair. Renewable sources of energy are increasingly valued worldwide, because of energy shortages and environmental contamination. The global demand for energy and more specifically clean energy is growing rapidly. Since fossil energy is getting less and less, it is important to focus on usage and development of renewable energy. Current trends in energy policies are oriented increasingly to renewable energy using sustainable and natural sources. Due to the advantages of clean, widely distributed and with giant reserves, solar energy is recognized as one of the most competitive green energy and it draws the attention of the world. In the other hand, today one of the approaches to achieve comprehensive economic and social development in the world is having a source of sustainable energy, continuous and reliable.
Among the types of renewable energy, solar energy, due to many advantages like the ability to direct conversion to electricity and heat, the simplicity of use, storage capability and being endless, is being more considered. So that in recent decade a lot of researches in the world and Iran have been completed on solar energy systems.
One important aspect for achieving such highly ambitious plans to identify the promising geographical areas for establishing such solar plants since with the existing low conversion efficiencies, installation of solar power plant requires an enormous amount of investment in terms of land, money, and manpower. Selecting a proper site for a thermal power plant is important for its long-term efficiency and a lot of factors come into play when deciding where to install the plant. Of course it may not be possible to get everything which is desirable at a single place but still, the location should contain an optimum mix of the requirements for the settings to be feasible for long-term economic justification of the plant.
Due to the potential of solar energy and the country's need for renewable energy, it is necessary to identify the suitable location for using solar energy. Today, the project of locating industry and land use planning is principles and methods of ecological capability. This project involves the identification of existing technologies in terms of the balance of industrial and environmental requirements. In this article, with reviewing some published articles about a variety of locations for renewable energy, the main criteria applied to determine the optimal location for using solar energy and for Iran, localization and presented. This category has economic and environmental benefits. The results show that the main criteria for solar locating in Iran are, the sunshine, cloudiness, dust, humidity, altitude, solar potential map, land use and land cover types and distance from transmission lines and access roads. Due to the weakness and gap in locating and sizing the renewable energy resources in our country, it is suggested to focus on the sizing and locating the renewable energy power plants in order to minimizing the losses and optimizing the costs.