Site selection of wind power in East Azarbaijan province by using AHP

Limited fossil energy source and increase of energy use is always pushed man to replace the energy source. In this case the winds have always had a special place in the new generation of energy sources. East Azarbaijan province because of the topographical and relativity situation is one of the best places for building a wind farm. therefore this research have been done to find out the best places for building wind farms in East Azarbaijan province, to find this places different criteria and sub criteria have been used. Given the importance of information fusion, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) were selected for weighting the layers and were implemented by the help of Expert choice software. For special analyses and overlapping of layers the Arc GIS program have been used and after the analysis of information, according to the capacity of building wind farms, province of East Azarbaijan have been divided to four parts, great, good, normal, weak. At last, final conclusions represent that Geographic Information System as a Supportive Decision making system can be practical both in preparing of data and designing the priorities and expert's ideas dealing with different factors and also help the designers to select the proper location to found the wind farms. In this research,15 regions have been determined, considering priority of, overlay, limitation of land and places, survey of priority area, climate condition and personal observation have been determined that in sequence this places are Tabriz, Sahand, Osko, Azarshahr, Bostanabad, Shabestar, Jolfa, Haris, Miyane, Bonab, Marageh, Sarab, Ahar, Charayomagh and Hashtrod.