The Solargis Project

Electricity production in rural areas is a potential market for systems using Renewable Energy (RE) technologies. The technology of systems using solar and wind energies has been widely studied and improved since ten or twenty years, and it is today well known that they are in many cases competitive with classical systems using only fossil fuels. But as there is a wide range of technologies able to produce a clean energy in various conditions, it is difficult to plan the development of renewable energies at the scale of a large region. The question of integration involves many actors such as electric utilities, regional authorities, municipalities, syndicates, private producers, consumers,... They have different priorities and many different questions to solve, such as :
• What is the adequate system at a given place ? (choice of technology, sizing)
• What are the best sites for the use of a particular technology inside a region ? (site selection)
• What are the total installable power, the related investment costs, ..., for different RE systems ? (potential evaluation)
Answering these questions implies two major requirements : 
1. It is necessary to take into account a large number of parameters, such as : the wind or solar resource locally available, the type of electricity demand to be covered, the localization of the existing electric grid, the terrain characteristics (land use, orography, slope, ...), ... These data have a common characteristic: they are location dependent, which means that they can be represented through the use of maps.
2. It is also necessary to evaluate the influence of these different parameters on the behavior of the different technologies able to provide the required electricity production. This is possible through the use of appropriate technical and economic evaluation modules.
The purpose of the SOLARGIS methodology is to lead at a regional scale comprehensive integration studies through the use of an adapted information environment, that includes : a Geographical Information System (GIS), which allows a proper management of the different geographical information layers and a set of technical and economical evaluation tools, linked to the GIS database. The scope of the methodology covers two main types of electrification systems : stand alone systems for the electrification of isolated houses (Solar or Wind Home Systems) and hybrid systems for the electrification of small villages.The technical and economical evaluation of such systems implies to take into account the amount of locally available wind and solar resource, the grid connection length to the grid and the population density. The aim of the analysis for this type of systems is to select the most appropriate system. The comparison is made on the basis of the cost of the produced electricity for a given demand. The methodology provides a selection of the potential users for which a decentralised option is cheapest than a direct connection to the grid. It allows to estimate the potential of RE electrification systems inside a region. This is of high interest for decision makers in charge of energy planning at regional level. The different steps of the methodology applied to study the potential of photovoltaic systems are summarized on the image below.

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