Assessment of biomass potential for power production: a GIS based method

A method is presented, which estimates the potential for power production f rom agriculture residues. A GIS decision support system (DSS) has been deve loped, which implements the method and provides the tools to identify the g eographic distribution of the economically exploited biomass potential. The procedure introduces a four level analysis to determine the theoretical, a vailable, technological and economically exploitable potential. The DSS han dles all possible restrictions and candidate power plants are identified us ing an iterative procedure that locates bioenergy units and establishes the needed cultivated area for biomass collection. Electricity production cost is used as a criterion in the identification of the sites of economically exploited biomass potential. The island of Crete is used as an example of t he decision-making analysis. A significant biomass potential exists that co uld be economically and competitively harvested. The main parameters that a ffect the location and number of bioenergy conversion facilities are plant capacity and spatial distribution of the available biomass potential. (C) 2 001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.