4. Decision Criteria for Optimal Location of Solar Plants: Photovoltaic and Thermoelectric

This chapter deals with the study and evaluation of decision criteria that should be considered for the optimal location of solar photovoltaic plants and solar thermal plants with high temperature and which are to be connected to the electricity distribution network. Criteria and subcriteria to be regarded will be of different nature, since environmental, geomorphologic, location, and strictly climatic criteria will all be considered, some of which are dependent on the technology being installed. Thus, we consider as possible alternatives the optimal locations and we will begin with a set of criteria, which must be evaluated for each of the possible alternatives for such a purpose, and includes both quantitative as well as qualitative information. As vaguely implied linguistic variables and numeric values have to be employed due to this disparity in the nature of the information, we will model the weights of the criteria by triangular fuzzy numbers. In order to reflect this and to carry out the extraction of knowledge a survey based on the fuzzy AHP methodology will be elaborated and sent to experts. In this way it will be possible to obtain the weights of the considered criteria for further evaluation of the alternatives.