Scalable methodology for wind and photovoltaic energy technical potential assessment: Application to Sicilian minor islands

Providing electricity in non-interconnected islands is a big challenge, exacerbated by the high cost of transporting fossil fuels and the non-viability of extending grid connections. Currently, diesel power plants provide almost all the electricity demand in these areas and installing renewable energy systems is deemed a practical solution to boost these communities’ energy transition and self-sufficiency. This thesis aims to determine the technical potential of wind and photovoltaic renewable energy sources on the fourteen non-interconnected Sicilian minor islands, through an original and scalable methodology to facilitate proper planning of the energy transition process of these territories. The methodology is based on a spatial energy planning approach, which considers normative constraints, mainly about environment and landscape safeguard, on a national, regional and local scale, beyond the techno-economic aspects, to determine the suitable areas for renewable energy exploitation. The wind energy technical potential is evaluated by means of the WAsP software suite. This tool is used to place wind farms in suitable areas and simulate their annual energy production, considering the specific terrain characteristics and the technical specification of the chosen wind turbines. The photovoltaic technical potential is performed through the open-source software QGIS, in particular using the Solar Energy on Building Envelopes plugin, which estimates shortwave irradiance on ground and roofs that is the main input data for the subsequent calculations. The proposed methodology is implemented on QGIS; in this way, geospatial analysis of the unsuitable areas is performed, a geodatabase containing all the layers produced is created and the resource maps generated can be graphically visualized on a georeferenced environment. Estimation of the technical potential is reported for every single island, and it represent an essential starting point for planning functional projects to accelerate the energy transition of the Sicilian minor islands.