| With rising concerns about dependency on fossil fuels, climate change and energy costs, people are turning towards renewable energy sources to supply their current and future energy needs. Landfills are particularly well suited for large scale renewable energy because they offer thousands of acres of open space, are located in areas near critical infrastructure and high energy needs and have a low demand for real estate development. Solar photovoltaics (PV) are the predominate renewable energy technology currently installed on landfills; however, not all landfills are suitable for solar PV. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) created documents and screening tools to help guide government officials and other stakeholders through a selection process for potentially contaminated or underutilized sites for solar PV suitability and redevelopment.;This study used the screening criteria suggested by the EPA and NREL with ESRI's ArcGIS software to identify the solar potential of closed landfills in Illinois. An initial screening was first performed filtering out landfills based on closing year, opening year, last year waste was accepted, total acreage and proximity to transmission line. Based on those results, a more site-specific screening was performed on the remaining landfills using DTM / DEMs to evaluate slope, aspect and annual solar radiation. All three rasters were combined into one final raster depicting areas that met none of the site-specific criteria to areas that met all of the site-specific criteria for each landfill. Estimates for solar power (kW) and annual energy (kWh/year) potential were calculated for the landfill areas that met all of the site-specific criteria. Using 2010 U.S. Census data, those estimates were then compared to the closest city or urban area to assess the number of households that could potentially be powered by each landfill. |
