Prioritization of Economic, Climatic and Security Indicators for Locating Solar Power Plants and Ranking the Centers of Selected Provinces of Iran Using Factor Analysis and MCDM Combined Methods

Iran has the good solar energy absorption potentials because of its situation on world warm belt . This situation creates a good opportunity for using of solar power plants. This research early introduces the important criterions in three sections: economic, climate & security such as Income and expenses, air temperature, cloudy sky index, air pollution index , wind speed index, sunlight hour’s index, sunlight angle index etc. Then by questionnaire tools and expert interviews and exploring statistical data from structural equation modeling, exploratory factor analysis & confirmatory factor analysis was prioritized the main factors. In the following, it uses AHP model for calculating of the weight of criteria and sub-criteria. Then the resulting weights are integrated with the weights obtained from structural equation modeling and the final weight was calculated. In the following, based on the main geographical directions of the country (N, S, E, W, C) and the subsidiary geographical directions of the country (NE, NW, SE, SW) , a province was selected as a sample. The result of the research shows between 9 geographical directions of Iran, respectively SW , Center and SE of geographical directions of the country are the best locations for commissioning of solar power plants .