Finding the best locations for establishment of solar-wind power stations in Middle-East using GIS: A review

Nowadays, renewable energies are more preferable to fossil fuels because of being free, widely available and producing minimal pollution. One of the disadvantages of renewable energy systems is that using only one type of renewable energy cannot guarantee a continuous power generation. To overcome this problem, two or more renewable energy systems should be used simultaneously to compensate for times when one of them is not available or the renewable system should be used aligned with the generator. In addition, another weakness is that they are not accessible in, every geographical position and location. It is clear that renewable energy systems can be exploited to their fullest capacity when used in the proper place. Therefore, given the importance of finding suitable places for co-utilization of several renewable energies, present paper attempted to find the ideal locations for construction of hybrid solar-wind power stations in Middle-East using Boolean model in GIS software. The Boolean method is, in a way, a more stringent method compared to the other positioning methods. Therefore, the selected locations will definitely have greater energy potential by using the Boolean method. Data obtained by RETScreen4 software from 400 stations in Middle-East were used for collecting monthly weather information. Results of the current paper may be helpful in creating prospects for sustainable energy development for systems based on natural resources and facilitating the national power transmission and sustainable environmental policies. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.