Analysis Overview

As electricity demand grows across British Columbia, more renewable energy installations need to be developed to support a resilient, diversified, low-carbon future. In light of this challenge, a site suitability analysis was undergone to create a province-wide screening tool that determines the most optimal locations for solar PV development.

The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to combine heterogeneous input criteria into a single, comprehensive suitability model. Through expert consultation with professionals across academia, policy, and industry, weights were assigned to each criteria representing their relative importance in the siting process. The following table outlines the criteria, definitions, and weights used to rank the province’s landscape, providing a rigorous, data-driven foundation for our site selection analysis.

Prior to criteria weighting, a land constraint layer was applied to exclude restricted areas from the analysis, including:

  • Protected and Conserved Areas: Provincial/federal parks, ecological reserves, and protected watersheds.
  • Unsuitable Land Covers: Water bodies, wetlands, permanent snow and ice, and artificial/built environments
  • Dense Forests: stands with a canopy cover greater than 40%
  • Agricultural Land Reserve: Filtered to Soil Capability Classes 1-3
  • Linear Infrastructure: All roads and railways

Explore the map below to see how the distribition of land constraints and suitability classes across the province, along side the locations of BC’s 12 existing solar installations.

Criteria Impact/Definition Weight
Proximity to the Grid High-voltage transmission infrastructure is expensive to construct. Proximity to existing substations minimizes interconnection costs and improves project economics 30.2%
Global Tilted Irradiance The total solar radiation received by a panel tilted toward the sun, accounting for direct, diffuse, and ground-reflected light 26.3%
Proximity to Demand Centers Siting generation near major load centers minimizes transmission line losses and reduces grid congestion 14.4%
Proximity to Major Roads Proximity to transportation networks lowers site construction costs, simplifies heavy equipment haulage, and ensures long-term operational access 11.2%
Ground Aspect Topographic orientation relative to the sun. In the Northern Hemisphere, south-facing slopes maximize annual solar energy yield 9.3%
Ground Slope Terrain steepness. Gentle or flat terrain minimizes civil grading costs, simplifies tracker/mounting installation, and prevents inter-row panel shading 8.5%
Suitability Map
BC Land Base by Suitability Class
Class 4 & 5 Suitability by Regional District
Solar Resource Potential

Technical potential translates suitable land area into electricity generation capabilities. We calculated installable capacity (GW) for each viable site using the parcel’s area, a 23% panel efficiency, latitude-dependent Ground Cover Ratios, and a Packing Density Ratio. Annual energy yield draws from PVout (potential photovoltaic output) values for each site. Yield estimates are based on a 1 MW minimum production threshold, providing a realistic assessment of the province’s solar energy potential ceiling.

To illustrate the spectrum of development opportunities, the map distinguishes between two development pathways: +2 MW sites within municipal boundaries (community-scale installations) and +100 MW sites outside municipal boundaries (utility-scale installations). These dual pathways reflect BC’s capacity to meet renewable energy targets through both distributed and centralized generation.

Explore the map below to see the raw photovoltaic resource distribution across the province, viable site locations at different scales, and total capacity and annual energy yield across BC’s regional districts.

Photovoltaic Power Potential Map

Area of suitable sites in BC (km²)

2844

Installable Capacity (GW)

143

Annual Energy Yield (TWh/year)

182

From Screening to Site Selection

TOPSIS – Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution – is a methodological extension of AHP used to rank alternatives based on their geometric distance from ideal and non-ideal solutions. This approach identifies sites that simultaneously maximize desirable criteria (e.g., high irradiance, proximity to substations) while minimizing undesirable ones (e.g., steep terrain, north facing aspects).

We applied TOPSIS to the Thompson-Nicola Regional District (TNRD) as a detailed case study, ranking all eligible sites within the region to identify priority development locations. Notably, the top-ranked site aligns with the location of the proposed Nicola Lake Solar Farm, validating the methodology’s capacity to identify viable development opportunities. This analysis demonstrates how the suitability framework translates into actionable site-level investment decisions at the regional scale.

Explore the map and table below to see the ranked sites across the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, with top-ranked sites indicating the strongest candidates for development.

Site Rank Capacity (MW) Annual Energy (TWh) Nearest Municipality
1.0 1629.8 2.2 City of Merritt
2.0 1235.28 1.63 City of Kamloops
3.0 936.03 1.21 City of Kamloops
4.0 830.13 1.13 City of Merritt
5.0 749.31 0.98 Village of Cache Creek
6.0 598.84 0.79 City of Kamloops
7.0 565.23 0.77 City of Merritt
8.0 492.32 0.66 City of Merritt
9.0 427.61 0.55 City of Kamloops
10.0 386.85 0.53 City of Merritt
TNRD PV Site Ranking Map

This research was undertaken thanks in part to funding from the Canada First Research Excellence Fund, as part of the University of Victoria-led Accelerating Community Energy Transformation (ACET) Initiative

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CC BY 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Created by Mackenzie Thomson