simonMakumi/solar-siting-kenya

Multi-criteria suitability model in Google Earth Engine identifying candidate sites for utility-scale solar in Kenya. # Utility-Scale Solar Siting in Kenya A multi-criteria suitability model in Google Earth Engine, screening the whole country down to **63 candidate parcels covering 4,807 km²** — 0.8% of Kenya's land area. **Open the interactive map** ## The question Kenya has excellent solar resource and a national target for renewable generation. But "sunny and flat" describes most of the country, which is useless for deciding where to build. The question a developer actually asks is narrower: where is the resource strong, the ground buildable, the land not already spoken for, and the grid close enough to connect to? ## Result | | | |---|---| | Candidate parcels over 5 km² | 63 | | Total area above the score cut | 4,807 km² (0.83% of Kenya) | | Largest single parcel | 382 km², Turkana | | National mean solar resource | 5.83 kWh/m²/day | Nine of the top ten parcels sit between 35.4° and 36.1°E, a corridor running through Turkana, West Pokot and Samburu, with one outlier in Isiolo. That clustering is the useful output. It is a shortlist, not a description of the country. | Rank | Area km² | Latitude | Longitude | Region | |---|---|---|---|---| | 1 | 382 | 2.332 | 35.868 | Turkana | | 2 | 364 | 3.151 | 35.814 | Turkana (Lodwar) | | 3 | 249 | 2.383 | 35.650 | Turkana | | 4 | 136 | 1.789 | 35.522 | Turkana / West Pokot | | 5 | 133 | 0.954 | 37.714 | Isiolo | | 6 | 108 | 3.042 | 35.664 | Turkana | | 7 | 94 | 2.123 | 36.102 | Samburu | | 8 | 78 | 1.938 | 35.402 | West Pokot | | 9 | 72 | 2.277 | 35.473 | Turkana | | 10 | 64 | 1.794 | 36.797 | Samburu / Laikipia | ## Method Three criteria are scored continuously and combined by weight. Four are hard exclusions. **Weighted, normalised 0–1** | Criterion | Weight | Source | Rationale | |---|---|---|---| | Grid proximity | 0.40 | VIIRS night-lights (proxy) | Transmission runs $300k–1M per km, and is the most common reason a project dies. | | Solar resource | 0.35 | ERA5-Land, 2024 | Drives revenue, but Kenya's range is narrow eno …