Wind farm sites selection using GIS and multi-criteria analysis: The case of Sumba Island - Indonesia

Renewable energy has grown rapidly nowadays. One of them is wind energy which also has been developed in Indonesia. One of the major technical challenges for wind energy development is to locate the areas with high suitability for placing wind farms, so finding suitable locations is critical for the economic success of wind farm operation. In the past few decades, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been widely used to assist for locating suitable sites for wind farms. In this study, GIS and multi-criteria decision analysis were used to select the suitable location for the wind farms in Sumba Island, Indonesia. There were five criteria used in the method, including distance to road, population density, wind potential, land use, slope, and added with exclusionary areas. The weighted overlay was used as the method to find the suitability wind farm sites with the concerns of geospatial layers related to the criteria. The resulted suitability map for the wind farm development in the study area gave five categories of suitability levels: unsuitable, very low, low, medium and high. Research results showed that around 21.5% area of Sumba Island fell into medium and high suitability levels. The method used in this study, if used with care, can be applied to other areas with a similar background.