Site selection of wind farms in Semnan province by using AHP method

Limited fossil energy source and increase of energy demand is always pushed man to search for new energy sources as replacement. In this case the winds always have a special place in the new generation of energy sources. Semnan province with favourable topographical and relativity suitable situation is one of the best places for building a wind farm.

Therefore, in this research different criteria and sub criteria have been used to identify the suitable location for building wind farms in Semnan province, As the importance of information fusion, Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method were employed for weighting the layers and the Expert Choice software implemented for this purpose. The Arc GIS program has been used for special analyses and overlapping of layers. After the analysis of information, according to the capacity of building wind farms, province of Semnan has been divided to four parts of great, good, normal and weak.

At last, it is indicated that Geographic Information System as a Supportive Decision making system can be practical both in preparing of data and designing the priorities and giving expert's ideas dealing with different factors and also help the designers to select the proper location for the wind farms.

In this research, three regions have been determined, considering priority of overlaying and limitation of land and places, survey of priority area also considering the climate condition and personal observation have been determined that this places are Damghan, Nothwestern of Garmsar and and some part of eastern Shahroud.