Towards a Sustainable Spatial Planning Approach for PV Site Selection in Portugal

In the present paper, we introduce a decision-support framework to (a) classify and prioritize the municipalities of a country based on their suitability to host PV energy projects and (b) pinpoint and evaluate suitable technically and economically viable, as well as environmentally and socially sustainable, sites for PV installation in the most suitable municipalities of a country. The proposed framework is applied in Portugal. It consists of two distinctive stages: 'Energy Roadmap for PV Deployment' and 'PV Site-Selection Analysis and Assessment'. In the first stage, the most and least suitable municipalities for PV deployment in Portugal are identified by analyzing important environmental and technoeconomic PV siting criteria in GIS and applying the TOPSIS method. In the second stage, an integrated PV site-selection assessment is conducted in the Portuguese municipality with the highest suitability index for PV installations. This is achieved by combining a proper GIS siting model with various multicriteria decision-making methods, such as ENTROPY, AHP and TOPSIS. The results illustrate the suitability of numerous municipalities in the country for PV deployment and verify the excellent suitability of the Municipality of Mertola for PV installations. In conclusion, a PV energy roadmap for Portugal is formulated, contributing to national energy autonomy.