GIS-BASED SUITABILITY ANALYSIS FOR SITING SOLAR POWER PLANTS IN SALEM DISTRICT, TAMIL NADU, INDIA

Abstract Solar energy is one of the sustainable and cleanest ways to produce power, and humans can harness it to generate power for day-to-day activities without producing harmful pollutants. Green electricity can become the cheapest form of energy by 2050, and in the long-term supply up to three-quarters of all demand. The installation of a solar power plant will help to satisfy the power demands of the consumers at a cheaper cost. Hence, this study will evidently show the precise location to gather the utmost solar radiation in Salem district, Tamil Nadu. The methodology involves the usage of OSM (Open Series Map) SOI (Survey of India) toposheets to create buffer analysis from roads and streams; Landsat 8 satellite data was used to create a land use/land cover map of the study area. Solar radiation and NDVI maps were created using MODIS data and the Global horizontal irradiance data were obtained from Global Solar Atlas. The final Site Suitability map was made by organizing all the criteria based on the AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) of the MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision-Making) method. The GIS and statistical techniques aid in finding the ideal suitable site for installing a solar power plant in the study area