Geothermal Power Plant Site Selection with Environmental Consideration in Namafjall Area, North Iceland

Abstract

This paper’s aim is selection of appropriate location for a new geothermal power plant in the Namafjall geothermal field, North Iceland. Three alternative sites were first selected for a proposed power plant, and the environmental, natural risk potentials and economical factors were evaluated for the sites and performed a final selection. Twelve different factors were examined. Firstly each site was evaluated for every factor and a relative value from 1 to 3, was assigned to the sites. Moreover, the defined factors were evaluated based on the importance with respect to the others. Finally a matrix analysis was carried out to evaluate the sites. In the result, site A, is the best one scoring 85 % of the ideal site score, site B was second with 68 % and site C came the last with 47 % of the score for the ideal available power plant site in the study area.