Solar Energy Site Suitability Analysis
A reproducible GIS analysis that integrates land use, elevation, protected lands, solar resource, and transmission infrastructure datasets to evaluate solar development suitability across Colorado.
Project Summary
- Status
- Completed
- Timeline
- April 2026
- Visual proof
- Spatial Layers -> Suitability Score
Placeholder visual
Featured case-study visual
Placeholder visual: Colorado suitability map with candidate zones and legend.
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Problem
Renewable energy planning requires combining geographic constraints, infrastructure proximity, and resource potential to narrow down realistic candidate locations.
Approach
Integrate multiple spatial datasets, harmonize coordinate systems, apply spatial joins and buffer analysis, and score candidate areas using suitability criteria.
Architecture
System flow and processing stages.
Stage 1
Land use, elevation, protected lands, solar resource, and transmission layers
Stage 2
Spatial cleaning and CRS harmonization
Stage 3
Constraint filtering and buffer analysis
Stage 4
Spatial joins and raster/vector processing
Stage 5
Multi-criteria suitability scoring
Stage 6
Candidate site maps and ranked outputs
Data Sources
- Land-use datasets
- Elevation data
- Protected lands data
- Solar resource data
- Transmission infrastructure data
Methods
- Spatial joins
- Buffer analysis
- Coordinate transformations
- Suitability scoring
- Cartography
Technologies
- Python
- GeoPandas
- Shapely
- PyProj
- QGIS
- GDAL
Evidence and Screenshots
Visual assets to replace placeholders.
Placeholder visual
Final Colorado suitability map
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Placeholder visual
Criteria layers for land use, elevation, protected lands, solar resource, and transmission
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Placeholder visual
Candidate site ranking table
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Results
- Generated a suitability map for utility-scale solar planning in Colorado.
- Integrated environmental, infrastructure, and resource constraints into one geospatial workflow.
- Produced decision-support visuals and candidate site rankings.
Metrics and Evaluation Needed
- Suitability score distribution
- Excluded land by constraint type
- Candidate sites by county
- Distance-to-transmission histogram
Challenges
- Spatial layers used different coordinate systems and resolutions.
- Suitability criteria required balancing interpretability with domain constraints.
- Map outputs needed to be useful for planning, not just visually attractive.
Lessons Learned
- Geospatial analysis becomes powerful when it connects data layers to practical planning decisions.
- CRS alignment and preprocessing strongly affect downstream results.
- Transparent scoring rules make suitability models easier to evaluate.
Future Work
- Add an interactive map with layer toggles.
- Add weighting controls for suitability criteria.
- Add transmission-distance sensitivity analysis.
Interactive Demo Ideas
- Interactive suitability map
- Layer toggle explorer
- Criteria weighting simulator
What This Demonstrates