RENEWABLE ENERGY

Renewable energy or often referred to as clean energy is energy from natural sources that

are virtually inexhaustible but the energy produces is limited to the energy available per unit of

time. The major types of renewable energy are Biomass, Hydropower, Geothermal, Wind and

Solar. (U.S. eia, 2020).

According to the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC), the major

use of renewable energy is anticipated to increase to over 25% by 2025. Only with a suitable

continuous supply of energy is a quick switch to renewable sources of energy possible. Solar

energy is available year-round and is intermittent, unlike hydro and wind energy, which are

seasonally reliant and discontinuous (Wu et al., 2021).

The Philippines created laws to promote the development of Renewable energy. There

are two major laws regarding renewable energy: Republic Act (RA) 9367 or the Biofuels Act of

2006, and RA 9513 or the Renewable Energy Act of 2008 (Rosellon, 2017). The goal of the

Biofuels Act of 2006 is to lessen the dependence of the country on imported fuels by ordering

the utilization and further development of locally produced biofuels. The Renewable Energy Act

of 2008 aims to lessen the country’s dependence on fossil fuel by supporting studies and

developments on renewable energy (Rosellon, 2017).

Off-grid islands in the Philippines are mainly powered by diesel generators, which results

in expensive electricity that is disrupted by fuel supply issues. Off-grid electrification is

additionally hampered by the nation's archipelagic geography and the high capital expense of

grid extension. These issues can be resolved while boosting cleaner energy production by

switching from diesel-only systems to hybrid renewable energy systems and connecting the

island microgrids (Agua et al., 2020).

SOLAR ENERGY

Solar energy has been the most popular option when renewable energy is discussed. It is

essentially an energy source where you can harvest it anywhere as long as there is ample amount

of sunlight. Electricity is produced through the conversion of solar radiation due to the

photovoltaic effect. This effect can occur on semiconductors, which present two energy bands, in

one of them the presence of electrons is allowed (valence bad) and in the other there is no

presence of them, i.e., the band in completely “empty” (conduction band). Silicon is commonly

used as a semiconductor in photovoltaic systems, with silicon being the second most abundant

element on earth (Sampaio & González, 2017).

By 2025, the Mexican government wants to produce 35% of its electricity from

renewable sources. Mexico has a huge potential for solar energy utilization because of its high

levels of irradiation (6.36 kWh/m2 on average per day), which cover the entire country. PV

panels in particular are used by businesses and industries to diversify their energy sources,

increase productivity, and cut costs. However, government incentives from the 2013 Energy

Reform, along with the recent drop in the cost of solar equipment, the quick payback, and the

long-term savings, make the investment in solar power a wise financial move for businesses

(Molina, 2022).

TOPOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS

GIS

A Geographic Information System (GIS) is a set of computer tools for visualizing,

manipulating, processing, and analyzing spatial data. GIS can be presented as a commercial or
free software tool, or as a toolbox (collection of functions and methods) in popular engineering

programming packages such as MATLAB®, R, or Phyton (Polo & Martín-Pomares, 2019).

ArcGIS, professional software containing the state of the art in geographic information

systems (https://www.arcgis.com/index.html), is probably the most well-known commercial GIS

software. Nonetheless, there is open-source alternative software available that can be useful for a

variety of applications. One of the most popular is QGIS (https://qgis.org/es/site/), whose

community is constantly adding new features and updating the program. QGIS was created as a

project of the Open-Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo), a non-profit organization dedicated

to fostering and supporting open geospatial technologies in general (https://www.osgeo.org/)

(Polo & MartínPomares, 2019).

Essentially, spatial data is presented in a GIS as a series of layers. Every layer can be a

vector or raster layer, and GIS software usually provides specific instructions methods that work

with vector or raster layers. A GIS can display information in a single location. A single map

with multiple layers of data. This necessitates the use of the by all layers. To be visualized

together, they must use the same system of reference. Furthermore, there are as well as methods

for data restructuring and conversion into various formats, such as raster-to-vector conversion

(Polo & Martín-Pomares, 2019).

MCDM

MCDM is a decision-making process commonly used to aid in the selection of

installation sites of PV farms by taking into account different factors to reduce inaccuracy. AHP

is a mathematical technique that is frequently used to simplify decision-making and performs

pair-wise comparisons of particular qualitative criteria (Elboshy et al., 2022).

 The Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and fuzzy set theory have been extensively

used in Multi-Criteria Decision Making. Making (MCDM) process in which fuzzy numbers are

used to more realistically represent human judgments. In the past, several articles have been

published over the last few decades proposing algorithms for priority vectors (or weight vector)

can be computed using fuzzy comparison matrices (Ahmed & Kilic, 2019).

Weights in FAHP are calculated using fuzzy logic. Comparison matrices that are later

used to rank the available alternatives alongside the scores obtained by the alternative solutions

for each criterion. As a result, one of the critical steps is determining the weights from

comparison matrices. Steps in the procedure. These weights are shown to be the eigenvectors of

the comparison matrix in conventional AHP in order to have a completely consistent decision

maker (Ahmed & Kilic, 2019). Fuzzy AHP is one of the frequent MCDA method used in the

evaluation of criteria Electricity Generation Technologies, Geographical Areas and Recycling

Strategies (Cinelli et al., 2022).