Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis to Evaluate the Geographic Potential of Alternative Photovoltaic Types
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe topic discussed in the article is interesting.
It describes the multi-criteria decision analysis to evaluate the Alternative Photovoltaics types.
My comments for improvement:
1. To enhance the literature review, include the current literature. from the list of references, the work cites only covers until 2022.
2. It would be good if the author/s could include the flow of the research process.
3. It would be good if the discussion section could include citations from previous research.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
There is no major issue with the English Language used in this article.
However, it would be good to avoid any jargon and complex sentences.
Author Response
Comment 1: To enhance the literature review, include the current literature. from the list of references, the work cites only covers until 2022.
Response 1: Thank you for your comment. On the one hand, we now added our own related research (see Figure 2 in Response 3) with Hübl et al. (2024) working on certain Floating-PV criteria, and Welscher et al. (2023) describing the PV potential of vertical areas, and on the other, we updated the literature review within Related Work, chapter 2. In detail, we added Jamil et al. (2023) in the context of Agri-PV, Liang et al. (2024) for BIPV, Lodhi et al. (2024) that handles PV-potential on rooftops.
Comment 2: It would be good if the author/s could include the flow of the research process.
Response 2: Thank you for your review. We added an image that visualizes the applied workflow in four steps within chapter 3. Research Methodology (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Added workflow in chapter 3. Research Methodology.
Comment 3: It would be good if the discussion section could include citations from previous research.
Response 3: Thank you for your review and suggestion to mention previous research. Now, beside the citations within the Introduction, we tried to directly link the shown approach to our previous and current work within chapter 5 Discussion and Future Prospects, which is Hübl et al. (2024) working on certain Floating-PV criteria, and Welscher et al. (2023) describing the PV potential of vertical areas (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: Changes made according to comment 1 and 3 of Reviewer 1.
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe paper evaluates the investigated site using multicriteria analysis for the use of photovoltaic panels.
Comments:
The abstract needs to be revised according to the journal's guidelines
Chapters 1 and 2 could be combined and revised
I would welcome a more detailed description of the individual criteria.
How will the energy supply be provided? Do the criteria also include the points of consumption - the power lines?
What is the legislative background to using photovoltaic panels and their potential for use for example on agricultural land? Is it possible to build solar power plants on a larger area - meadows, pastures?
I recommend adding a brief overview of the legislation on the use of solar energy in your country.
Author Response
Comment 1: The abstract needs to be revised according to the journal's guidelines
Response 1: Thank you for the hint. We now added the missing parts within the abstract, which were the research questions and a conclusion (see the details in Figure 3).
Figure 3: Changes within the abstract to follow the journal’s guidelines.
Comment 2: Chapters 1 and 2 could be combined and revised
Response 2: Thank you for your review. We agree that small pieces of the chapters repeat themselves. However, we decided to keep these chapters separated because we think that it helps understanding the research.
Comment 3: I would welcome a more detailed description of the individual criteria.
Response 3: We appreciate your comment. However, we think that the description of the criteria is detailed enough as we dedicated at least one sentence to each criterion.
Comment 4: How will the energy supply be provided? Do the criteria also include the points of consumption - the power lines?
Response 4: Thank you for your questions, we appreciate them. With the shown method, we tried to generate a general basis for decision makers. It does not include the actual energy supply options as a factor. This is rather an economic factor and thus lies not within the focus of our work. But we certainly included assumed points of consumption with a workaround based on buildings data. Thus, the shown method can be used and enriched with actual data, if available (see Figure 4). Now, we explicitly mentioned that power grid access also depends on economic factors. Please see chapter 4.1. Geographic Potential Criteria (see Figure 5). We hope that our adaptations and statements are a proper answer to your questions.
Figure 4: Adjustments in Chapter 3.2 Experimental Setup
Figure 5: Adjustments in Chapter 4.1. Geographic Potential Criteria.
Comment 5: What is the legislative background to using photovoltaic panels and their potential for use for example on agricultural land? Is it possible to build solar power plants on a larger area - meadows, pastures? I recommend adding a brief overview of the legislation on the use of solar energy in your country.
Response 5: The analysis of the legislative background belongs to the economic evaluation of photovoltaic potential. Further, the experts interviewed are mainly representatives from Austria, Switzerland and Germany, which is why their expertise reflects the legislative in the DACH-Area. Therefore, we do not deem it necessary to add this to our geographic potential analysis.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThis work has been presented to allocate areas suitable for the application of photovoltaic, in the context of agricultural areas, water bodies and parking spaces, using spatial Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis. I have the following comments:
1. In the introduction, the author repeated the reference quote [1] more than twice. It is more appropriate to indicate it only once at the end of the paragraph. Also, I think it is better to provide more recent references like providing statistics until 2024.
2. Line 40, to answer the question posed by the authors: What criteria influence the geographic potential of specific types of PV? I think authors should focus on the impact of shading, geography and climate as a whole.
3. In my opinion the following statement should revised by the authors: “There are numerous papers focusing on urban areas and the analysis of rooftops [6–10], while a few are concerned with the analysis of vertical facades [11,12]. However there are only a few publications concerning the PV types targeted in this paper, such as Floating-PV [13–16] or Agri-PV[17–19].” This statement is repeated also between line 93 and line 100.
4. For a more consistent and complete study (The collection of factors through expert interviews and questionnaires), I think, the authors can add other contexts to Agri-PV, Floating-PV and Parking-PV, such as Building-integrated photovoltaic “BIPV”, or others.
5. Line 246, please check:” This chapter describes the identified criteria and their assigned weighted scores, which….”
6. Line 249, please check “Criteria identified as major for all examined PV types are listed in ??.......”
7. The English of the manuscript should be revised.
Comments on the Quality of English Language
The English of the manuscript should be revised.
Author Response
Comment 1: In the introduction, the author repeated the reference quote [1] more than twice. It is more appropriate to indicate it only once at the end of the paragraph. Also, I think it is better to provide more recent references like providing statistics until 2024.
Response 1: Thank you for your review and hint regarding the quotes in the introduction. We reduced the mentioning of citation [1] to one at the end of the paragraph and added some recent ones. In detail, we added Jamil et al. (2023) in the context of Agri-PV, Liang et al. (2024) for BIPV, Lodhi et al. (2024) that handles PV-potential on rooftops. Further we added a more recent statistic to the introduction (see Figure 6).
Figure 6: Changes according to Comment 1 of Reviewer 3. Added more current statistics.
Comment 2: Line 40, to answer the question posed by the authors: What criteria influence the geographic potential of specific types of PV? I think authors should focus on the impact of shading, geography and climate as a whole.
Response 2: Thank you for your suggestion, we appreciate it. In fact, we followed the separation of PV potential according to the literature, which is the physical, geographical, technical, and economic potential. Physical PV potential (including solar irradiation) is the basis for all other types of PV potential, and we clearly focused on geographical potential (including shading effects) to develop a basis for further decision making, that then includes e.g., economic and maybe more detailed climate factors as well.
Comment 3: In my opinion the following statement should revised by the authors: "There are numerous papers focusing on urban areas and the analysis of rooftops [6-10], while a few are concerned with the analysis of vertical facades [11,12]. However there are only a few publications concerning the PV types targeted in this paper, such as Floating-PV [13-16] or Agri-PV[17-19]." This statement is repeated also between line 93 and line 100.
Response 3: Thank you for your comment. We revised the paper accordingly by changing the sentence (see Figure 7).
Figure 7: Revision according to comment 3 of Reviewer 3.
Comment 4: For a more consistent and complete study (The collection of factors through expert interviews and questionnaires), I think, the authors can add other contexts to Agri-PV, Floating-PV and Parking-PV, such as Building-integrated photovoltaic "BIPV", or others.
Response 4: Thank you so much for your suggestions. We now added more recent references within chapter 1. Introduction to show a broader context (see Figures 6 and 7). Within chapter 5 Discussion and Future Prospects we tried to directly link the shown approach to our previous work which also includes the analysis of PV potential of vertical PV types, which is mainly BIPV (see Figure 8). Further we cite a large amount of different works concerning different PV-types in chapter 2. Related Work. In general, this work focusses on horizontal PV types, thus we decided to also limit the context description to relevant literature only.
Figure 8: Revision according to comment 4.
Comment 5: Line 246, please check:" This chapter describes the identified criteria and their assigned weighted scores, which...."
Response 5: Thank you for your comment. We revised the comment accordingly (see Figure 9).
Figure 9: Revision of Paper according to comment 5 of Reviewer 3.
Comment 6: Line 249, please check "Criteria identified as major for all examined PV types are listed in ??......."
Response 6: We appreciate your comment and made sure to refer correctly to the according table (Table 1) that is mentioned in the text (see Figure 10).
Figure 10: Revision of paper according to comment 6 of Reviewer 3.
Comment 7: The English of the manuscript should be revised.
Response 7: Thank you for your review! We now took the chance and used a correction service of a native speaker. We hope that the improvement is appreciable, and the changes are adequate.
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThank you to the authors for responding to the review and completing the article.
Reviewer 3 Report
Comments and Suggestions for AuthorsThe responses provided to my comments are acceptable and I find the article acceptable for publication in ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information. Also, the English of the manuscript is acceptable.
