Literature Review

Fausto Cavallaro et aI., have applied multi criteria approach of DSS to make a preliminary assessment regarding the feasibility of installing wind energy turbines in Salina island (Aeolian islands/Italy) [1]. The use of decision making tools under a multi criteria approach are intended to aid the decision maker in the creation of a set of relations between various alternatives. The main steps relating to the formulation of a multi criteria problem were applied to the study area and they were as follows: defining the nature of the decision, selecting potential actions, defining a set of criteria, build payoff matrix (quantitative and qualitative measures of the effect produced by that alternative with respect to that criterion), and aggregation of preferences and comparison of criteria. The final order of merit for all the alternatives (from the best to the worst) is obtained as a result of the procedure described above. Al Mohamad et aI., have evaluated total wind energy potential for 3 different regions in Syrian land using program written in C++ Language [3]. It was designed to allow the operator to have a wide range of options especially over the turbine types and their efficiencies. The program was divided into three main parts. The first part processes and calculates the main parameters such as wind speed, wind power, and power density directly from the available data, which are considered to be essential for the following evaluation of the wind energy potential and the produced electricity. The second part of the program calculates the electricity produced from a wind farm using defined wind turbines with known output powerspeed curve and the third part calculates the economical feasibility for a proposed wind farm.

The estimated amount of potential power, considering the ratio of the land available for use equals to 1,2,4 and 6% of the total windy lands with a wind speed of about 7 mls and above, is found to be more than 20,000 MW in each of the mentioned three windy regions. It is found that in region 1 alone more than 20,000 MW of electricity can be generated if only 1% of the land was considered and in addition, it is found that region 2 and 3 have the potential of more than 10,000MW each for the same ratio of lands.A GIS based decision support system (DSS) is developed for evaluation of renewable energy sources (RES) potential and the financial analysis of renewable energy investments [4]. RES- DSS has been developed in MAPINFO Professional, a GIS environment under WINDOWS 95. A GIS database with data on wind, topography, urban area and special activities have been developed and used for the evaluation of theoretical potential through spatially continuous mapping of RE resources. The evaluation of wind potential is conducted in Crete Island by a sequence of steps, which represents sets of restrictions on the exploitation of the potential. In RES-DSS wind speed data is necessary for estimation of theoretical potential, which are modeled as region objects characterized by the attribute wind speed. Analysis presents high wind potential with wind velocity varying from 6 - 8 mls.