Location of Large-Scale Concentrating Solar Power Plants

Copyright © 2013 Verônica Wilma Bezerra Azevedo, Chigueru Tiba. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Heliothermic electricity generation is gaining popularity in several countries worldwide. In Brazil, this form of energy generation has not yet been explored for large scale projects. However, the country possesses extensive areas with nor-mal and high-intensity direct irradiation and low seasonality factors, particularly in the semi-arid region of the Brazilian Northeast. The region also presents other important features for setting up such plants: proximity to transmission lines, sufficient flatness, non-endangered vegetation, a suitable land use profile low maximum wind speeds, low population density, and more recently, an increase in the demand for local electric energy due to economic growth above the Bra-zilian average. A Geographic Information System includes a set of specialised resources that allow us to manipulate spatial data, providing quickness and efficiency in the identification of appropriate places for installing solar power plants while also preparing us for future scenarios, with regards to their impacts, costs and benefits. This article presents a study of the optimal location for thermoelectric power plants in the semi-arid region of the Brazilian Northeast on the scale of 1:10,000,000. All provinces with good potential for the implementation of large-scale concentrating sola