STUDY LOCATION OF SOLAR THERMAL POWER STATIONS OF LARGE SIZE IN NORTHEASTERN SEMI-ARID

FUNDAMENTALS AND METHODOLOGY

Abstract

With growing concern to produce electricity from renewable energy, the thermal solar electricity generation has repercussions in many countries, such as Spain, Portugal and Germany. In Brazil, this generation of energy in large projects (above 80MW), is still not carried out. However, it is known that the country has large areas with availability of direct solar radiation normal (one of the main parameters for the installation of solar power plants) in the Northeast of Brazil, specifically in the semiarid region, which has also other important variables for the installation of these plants, such as: great topographical conditions, low wind speed, low population density and lands that are not used for agriculture, for example. Furthermore, the introduction of solar power plants in the region will provide several benefits such as growth and development of a region, the implementation of social benefits and job creation. By means of a Geographic Information System (GIS) all important variables in the location of a solar power plant are represented as spatial data and, when modeled, allow to indicate the places suitable for installation of these plants. The GIS has resource to manipulate spatial data, providing fast and efficient identification of suitable places for installing solar plants while establishing future scenarios for energy planning, with their respective impacts, costs and benefits. This paper shows some fundamentals study of the best localization of solar thermoelectric central in Brazilian semi- arid, in scale 1:10.000.000. The tools of GIS (Geographic Information System) are presented and the localization will be defined with different information planes that are important in this case like: soil, direct normal solar radiation (annual average daily value), water, topography, etc. Maps algebra of information plane is used to define the best localization.