Determination of suitable areas for solar power plant installation by remote sensing and gis methods (Turkistan and Karaganda, Kazakhstan)

The energy which produced by traditional methods is costly and it turns out to be more advantageous to turn to renewable energy sources since it harms the environment. Kazakhstan has begun to turn to renewable energy sources, but it is not sufficient. This country, which has a huge surface area, has the opportunity to turn to completely renewable clean energy resources and has all the conditions in this regard. Nowadays, one of the most widely used renewable energy sources is solar energy. Kazakhstan has a great potential for solar energy, especially in terms of its geographical location in the southern regions. Site selection plays a very important role in the installation of solar power plants. Determination of the location of solar power plants depends on different criteria. Analysis of these criteria can be done in GIS environment. The purpose of this thesis study is to make appropriate site selection analysis of solar power plants using GIS techniques and decision support systems. As the multi criteria decision analysis (MCDA), the most widely used AHP method in the literature was chosen. All data used in the study are data obtained from open sources. Since the resolution of the data used in the study is approximately 1 km, the results obtained are predictive for the region. Keywords: Solar Power Plants, Site Selection, GİS, MCDA, AHP, Kazakhstan, Turkistan, Karaganda