The Wind Energy Potential Zoning using GIS and Fuzzy MCDM-based Approach (Study Area: Zanjan Province, Iran)

This study analyzes wind energy potentials of Zanjan province which located in northwest of Iran. Renewable energy plans are not fully environmentally safe and different renewable energy plans have different environmental impacts. Therefore، site selection is an important issue in the wind turbine installation and therefore، selecting an appropriate wind turbine site requires consideration of multiple alternative solution and evaluation criteria because of the system complexities. In this paper، using AHP and fuzzy TOPSIS techniques in conjunction with GIS، wind turbine potentials of the study area are evaluated. Criteria weights are obtained from pairwise comparison of identified criteria and after fuzzification of both criteria weights and criteria map layers using triangular fuzzy numbers، fuzzy TOPSIS technique is utilized to integrate and rank more suitable alternatives for the wind turbine installation. The results shows the ability of multi-criteria methods to evaluate suitable sites in geographic areas on one side and good potentials sites of Zanjan province to establish new energy plans on the other.