scholarly journals A Multi-Criteria Approach to Evaluate Floating Offshore Wind Farms Siting in the Canary Islands (Spain)

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 865
Author(s):  
Hugo Díaz ◽  
Carlos Guedes Soares

The study presents a methodology for floating wind farms site selection with a Canary Islands case study. The frame combines geographical information systems (GIS) and multiple criteria decision methods (MCDMs). First, the problematic areas for the installation of the turbines are identified through a GIS database application. This tool generates thematic layers representing exclusion criteria. Then, at the second stage of the study, available maritime locations are analyzed and ranked using the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), based on technical, economic, and environmental aspects. AHP’s technique guarantee the elimination of the judgment’s subjectivity. The study also compared the solutions of the AHP technique with other methods, such as Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE), ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la Realité (ELECTRE III), Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and Weighted Sum Algorithm (WSA(). The main result of this study is the creation of a realistic and objective overview of floating offshore wind farm site selection and the contribution to minimize the environmental impacts and to reduce the social conflicts between stakeholders.

2020 ◽  
pp. 0309524X2092539
Author(s):  
Mohamed Elgabiri ◽  
Diane Palmer ◽  
Hanan Al Buflasa ◽  
Murray Thomson

Current global commitments to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases encourage national targets for renewable generation. Due to its small land mass, offshore wind could help Bahrain to fulfil its obligations. However, no scoping study has been carried out yet. The methodology presented here addresses this research need. It employs analytical hierarchy process and pairwise comparison methods in a geographical information systems environment. Publicly available land use, infrastructure and transport data are used to exclude areas unsuitable for development due to physical and safety constraints. Meteorological and oceanic opportunities are ranked and then competing uses are analyzed to deliver optimal sites for wind farms. The potential annual wind energy yield is calculated by dividing the sum of optimal areas by a suitable turbine footprint to deliver maximum turbine number. In total, 10 favourable wind farm areas were identified in Bahrain’s territorial waters, representing about 4% of the total maritime area, and capable of supplying 2.68 TWh/year of wind energy or almost 10% of the Kingdom’s annual electricity consumption. Detailed maps of potential sites for offshore wind construction are provided in the article, giving an initial plan for installation in these locations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-243 ◽  

Wind energy offers significant potential for greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Most applications have been developed onshore but the planning and siting conflicts with other land uses have created considerable interest and motivated research to offshore wind energy establishments. In this paper, a systematic methodology in order to investigate the most efficient areas of offshore wind farms’ siting in Greece is performed, integrating multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) tools. In the first level of analysis, all coastal areas that don’t fulfill a certain set of criteria (wind velocity, protected areas, water depth) are identified with the use of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and excluded from further analysis. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is performed in the evaluation phase and pairwise comparisons provide the most appropriate sites to locate offshore wind farms. Information concerning evaluation criteria (average wind velocity, distance to protected areas, distance to ship routes, distance to the shore and distance of possible connection to the existing electricity network) is retrieved through GIS, eliminating the subjectivity in judgments. The whole methodology contributes to the portrait of the geographic analysis and stands as the last image of the space characteristics suitable for offshore wind farms.


Author(s):  
Seyyed Pooya Hekmati Athar ◽  
Dorsa Ziaei ◽  
Navid Goudarzi

Abstract Renewable Energy (RE)-based power production often comes with certain challenges in variability and uncertainty of generated electricity. One promising solution to tackle these challenges is developing a network of RE power plants with sites located far enough from each other that experience different weather patterns. Most of the site selection-related literature use Geographical Information Systems to determine the studied site RE suitability. This work converts the site selection into a numerical problem through a novel Networked Renewable Power Plant Site Selection model and solves it by employing optimization techniques. To enhance the accuracy of the results, it compares a set of criteria for individual and network of sites at different regions to determine the exact locations for RE plant developments. The Analytical Hierarchy Process is used for criteria weighing. The state-of-the-art meta-heuristic Bare Bones of Fireworks algorithm offer a simple, fast, yet accurate approach to solve the optimization. The proposed method is applied on North Carolina wind farms for both individual and a network of sites. The results identified the areas with the highest wind capacity potential for individual or a network of wind farms in North Carolina. The identified suitable areas were verified with Amazon Wind Farm US East.


Author(s):  
Diane Palmer ◽  
Mohamed Elgabiri ◽  
Hanan Al Buflasa ◽  
Murray Thomson

Current global commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases encourage national targets for renewable generation. Due to its small land mass, offshore wind could help Bahrain to fulfill its obligations. However, no scoping study has yet been carried out. The methodology presented here addresses this research need. It employs Analytical Hierarchy Process and pairwise comparison methods in a Geographical Information Systems environment. Publicly available land use, infrastructure and transport data are used to exclude areas unsuitable for development due to physical and safety constraints. Meteorological and oceanic opportunities are ranked, then competing uses are analyzed to deliver optimal sites for wind farms. The potential annual wind energy yield is calculated by dividing the sum of optimal areas by a suitable turbine footprint, to deliver maximum turbine number. Ten favourable wind farm areas were identified in Bahrain’s territorial waters, representing about 4% of the total maritime area, and capable of supplying 2.68 TWh/yr of wind energy or almost 10% of the Kingdom’s annual electricity consumption. Detailed maps of potential sites for offshore wind construction are provided in the paper, giving an initial plan for installation in these locations.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (07) ◽  
pp. 809-813
Author(s):  
M. Martínez ◽  
A. Pulido ◽  
J. Romero ◽  
N. Angulo ◽  
F. Díaz ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 890-900
Author(s):  
Elizabeth T Methratta

Abstract Offshore wind farms often co-occur with biodiverse marine ecosystems with high ecological, economic, and cultural value. Yet there are many uncertainties about how wind farms affect marine organisms and their environment. The before–after–control–impact (BACI) design, an approach that compares an impact location with an unaffected control both before and after the intervention, is the most common method used to study how offshore wind farms affect finfish. Unfortunately, this design has several methodological limitations that undermine its ability to detect effects in these studies. An alternative approach, the before–after-gradient (BAG) design, would sample along a gradient with increasing distance from the turbines both before and after the intervention, and could overcome many of the limitations of BACI. The BAG design would eliminate the difficult task of finding a suitable control, allow for the assessment of the spatial scale and extent of wind farm effects, and improve statistical power by incorporating distance as an independent variable in analytical models rather than relegating it to the error term. This article explores the strengths and weaknesses of the BACI and BAG designs in the context of offshore wind development and suggests an approach to incorporating the BAG design into existing fisheries surveys and a regional monitoring framework.


2019 ◽  
Vol 137 ◽  
pp. 01049
Author(s):  
Anna Sobotka ◽  
Kajetan Chmielewski ◽  
Marcin Rowicki ◽  
Justyna Dudzińska ◽  
Przemysław Janiak ◽  
...  

Poland is currently at the beginning of the energy transformation. Nowadays, most of the electricity generated in Poland comes from coal combustion. However, in accordance to the European Union policy of reducing the emission of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, there are already plans to switch to low-emission energy sources in Poland, one of which are offshore wind farms. The article presents the current regulatory environment of the offshore wind energy in Poland, along with a reference to Polish and European decarbonisation plans. In the further part of the article, the methods of determining the kinetic energy of wind and the power curve of a wind turbine are discussed. Then, on the basis of historical data of wind speeds collected in the area of the Baltic Sea, calculations are carried out leading to obtain statistical distributions of power that could be generated by an exemplary wind farm with a power capacity of 400 MW, located at the place of wind measurements. On their basis, statistical differences in the wind power generation between years, months of the year and hours of the day are analysed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 383-390 ◽  
pp. 3610-3616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xin Yin Zhang ◽  
Zai Jun Wu ◽  
Si Peng Hao ◽  
Ke Xu

Offshore wind farm is developed in the ascendant currently. The reliable operation, power loss, investment cost and performance of wind farms were effect by the integration solutions of electrical interconnection system directly. Several new integration configurations based on VSC-HVDC were comparative analyzed. For the new HVDC topology applied the wind farm internal DC bus, the Variable Speed DC (VSDC) system that is suitable for those topologies was proposed. The structure of VSDC was discussed and maximum wind power tracking was simulated on the minimal system. It is clear that new integration configurations based on VSC-HVDC has good prospects.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Nivet ◽  
Ema Muk-Pavic

Offshore wind energy is one of the most upcoming sources of energy, and it is already partially replacing the fossil fuelled power production. However, offshore wind turbine technology is also associated with harsher weather environment. Indeed, it experiences more challenging wind and wave conditions, which in turn limits the vessels capabilities to access the wind farms. Additionally, with the constant rise of power utilization, improvements in the Operation Maintenance (O&M) planning are crucial for the development of large isolated offshore wind farms. Improvements in the planning of the O&M for offshore wind farms could lead to considerable reduction in costs. For this reason, the interest of this research paper is the investigation of the most cost effective approach to offshore turbine maintenance strategies. This objective is achieved by implementing a simulation approach that includes a climate conditions analysis, an operation analysis, a failure evaluation and a simulation of the repairs. This paper points out how different O&M strategies can influence the sustainability of a wind farm.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document