Tesfaye, Ebisa (2016) A Fuzzy Approach for Modeling Potential Wind Farm Areas: A Case of Hitosa Woreda, Oromia Region, Ethiopia. Masters thesis, Addis Ababa University.
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Abstract
Being cleaner and climate friendly, wind energy has been increasingly utilized to meet the evergrowing global energy demands. In Ethiopia, a wide gap exists between wind resources and actual energy production, and it is imperative to expand the wind energy production. This study was conducted in Hitosa Woreda, which is located in East Showa Zone of Oromia Region, in the Rift valley area of the country. The main objective of this study was to identify potential wind farm sites in the study area using fuzzy approach. The development of new wind farm energy project requires studying of many parameters to achieve maximum benefits at the cost of minimum environmental impacts. While site selection, there is a problem comes with prioritizing criteria that determine the best location. Dealing with real life situation and experts' judgments involves uncertainty. To solve this problem, a model containing Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) technique that is Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with fuzzy theory was designed to handle the uncertainty situations. Ten criteria were adopted in this method, including wind speed, distance to roads, to rivers, from towns, from faults, closeness to power line, slope, lithology, elevation, slope and exclusionary areas. The weights of the criteria of the site were obtained through application of developed FAHP idea. Geographic Information System (GIS) was used to overlay and generate criteria maps, and IDRISI 17.0 was used for fuzzy aggregation and development of suitability map. The study ends with an assessment of proposed sites to the generated suitability map. The results of the assessment showed that the northern zones of the investigated region have high wind energy potentials. Such zones are appropriate for setting up electricity generating wind turbines. From total investigated area of 1260sq. km. the amount of extremely suitable zone was 96.902 sq. km, highly suitable zones was 152.194 sq. km, moderately suitable zones is 179.11 sq. km, less suitable zones was 311.159 sq. km. The suggested model may serve as a useful decision making tool for the energy planners and decision makers, intending to develop wind farm energy in the present study area. This model is accepted to help to identify suitable wind farm locations in other areas with a similar geographic back ground.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Crisp, Fuzzy, FAHP, GIS, wind farm |
| Subjects: | G Geography. Anthropology. Recreation > G Geography (General) Q Science > QE Geology S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) |
| Divisions: | Africana |
| Depositing User: | Selom Ghislain |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Oct 2018 13:08 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2018 13:08 |
| URI: | http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/7146 |
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