Rising levels of urbanization and technological advancements has led to a shift towards dependence on energy consuming devices, machineries, and electrical appliances both for personal and productive use. This has led to higher demand for electricity services and more pressure on power supply facilities. Many sub-Saharan African countries are finding it difficult to cope with the pressure of sustaining energy facilities while providing for the existing demand in a sustainable way. The study focused on the use of Multi Criteria decision models for selecting suitable sites for solar energy infrastructure establishment in Nigeria. The study answered three main questions including 1). What are the various considerations required for the establishment of the suitable land surfaces for solar power plants in Nigeria? 2). What are the spatial extents and estimate the potential land area that can host a renewable energy power plant based on established scenarios? 3). What is the possible contribution of each suitable land area to energy production? Secondary data was acquired for consideration of various criteria including the climatic, environmental, socio economic and geomorphological factors. The various datasets were scaled in order of importance and weighed among each other to produce a suitability map. The output was classified into 5 major suitability classes with certain protected areas totally restricted from the analysis. The suitable areas were labeled 1 to 5 from Unfeasible to Most Feasible. The largest land area was covered by the “Highly Visible” class while the part of the country with highest power production potential was the “Most Feasible” class. The study was able to present a good criteria model that can be useful for countries with similar demography.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-197140 |
Date | January 2022 |
Creators | Okosun, Nelson |
Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för geografi |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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