Renewable technologies are key players to foster the sustainable energy transition. From the early stage of a Project, interactions between the proposed installations and the surrounding environment should be duly considered. Such activity can be included in the Macrositing screening phase. This study focuses on the application of the GIS based Spatial Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) to identify suitable macro areas for the development of a 200 MWe floating wind farm in the Vietnamese offshore sector, tailoring the analysis on specific technical, environmental, and social features. To identify Project technological requirements, a patented floater concept, developed by Saipem, was considered, consisting of a hexagonal floating substructure anchored with six mooring lines.
The SMCE was designed by identifying constraints and factors. Constraints are criteria that completely exclude unsuitable areas where the installation of the technology is assumed to be unfeasible. Factors are criteria contributing to the suitability assessment with a positive or negative impact. Factors were normalized by fuzzy logic membership functions, and weighted according to the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). The Final Suitability Map was then performed combining constraints and factors.
The analysis provided a suitable area of 73,466 km2, (73.5% of the study area) including a very high suitable area of 367 km2. Within the latter, two potential wind farm locations were identified by, respectively, minimising CapEx and OpEx, and maximising the annual energy production. The two identified layouts consist of a series of 21 turbines with a power of 9.5MWe each. The proposed methodology represents a valuable tool in assisting developers in the early investment decisions.
Renewable technologies are key players to foster the sustainable energy transition. Interactions with environmental and social aspects should be considered in the preliminary selection of the optimal locations since early design phases. According to international bibliography, the Macrositing activity is best addressed through the Spatial Multi Criteria Evaluation ("SMCE"), performed through Geographic Information System ("GIS"), which provides the ranking of an area by a constraints-opportunities assessment. The objective of a SMCE is to support private projects origination, investors due-diligence or Authorities strategic programs in preliminary selecting suitable locations for their scope. SMCE is based on a referenced methodology ensuring a transparent, reliable, and time-to-market decision making process. SMCE has been implemented for decades in a wide range of development projects, from waste disposal [1] and afforestation [2] to renewable energies, such as photovoltaic [3], [4] and wind energy [4], [5].
