Geography and Regional Planning

Geography and Regional Planning

Optimal Site Selection for Solar Power Plants Using a Hybrid Shannon Entropy-TOPSIS Model (Case Study: Qeshm Island, Iran)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors
1 Islamic Azad University Qeshm branch
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Branch, Mashhad, Iran
10.22034/jgeoq.2026.545654.4336
Abstract
Optimal site selection for solar power plants is a complex multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) problem that ensures the technical and economic success of renewable energy projects. This research presents a scientific and objective framework to prioritize sixteen potential locations for solar power plant installation on Qeshm Island, Iran. For this purpose, a hybrid model based on Shannon Entropy for objective criteria weighting and the TOPSIS technique for the final ranking of alternatives was employed. Ten key criteria, including technical, economic, geographical, and environmental factors, were extracted using satellite data from the Google Earth Engine platform. The results from the Shannon Entropy weighting revealed that non-meteorological criteria had the most significant impact on differentiating between the alternatives; distance from residential areas (28.4%), land slope (20.2%), and distance from transmission lines (19.5%) were identified as the three main determining factors. Conversely, criteria such as solar radiation received negligible weight due to their uniform distribution across the region. The final TOPSIS ranking identified "Towla" as the absolute optimal option with the highest score (Ci = 0.714), followed by "Doostaku" and "Basaeidu" in the second and third ranks, respectively. This study demonstrates that the hybrid Shannon-TOPSIS model is an efficient and reliable tool for supporting strategic decision-making in the field of sustainable energy.
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