Suitability Mapping for Windfarm Lands in Burkina Faso

Abstract

The consumption of fossil fuels releases many greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that contributes significantly to the global warming. Many studies have shown that the global warming leads to changes in climate system. These fossil fuels are mainly used for energy production. Energy availability is very crucial for socio-economic development. However, Burkina Faso, as many other countries in African Sahel suffers from a lack of energy. The main sources of energy in the country are the thermal power plants and some hydropower stations. Nonetheless, the electricity production is insufficient to meet the energy demand. So, one of the solution to reduce the unmet demand in energy is the use of renewable energy, especially wind energy. Using the Local Polynomial Interpolation for wind speed and based on Weighted Linear Combination (WLC) and Boolean logic with socio-economic criteria, the suitability windfarm lands for the Burkina Faso have been made with ArcGIS. In additional, the fuzzy membership were used to standardize the criteria. And the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method were used to weight each criteria as well. Finally, the Western part of the country presents a suitability windfarm land. This region occupies an area of about 10,197.39 km2 and represents 3.68% of the country. The potential area could generate an annual average wind power density in the range of 344-487 W/m2.