GIS Mapping for Rainwater Harvesting in Ground-mounted Large Scale Solar PV Farms

Abstract

Developing green jobs in the solar field as well as reducing environmental impacts has been proven to offer major benefits to Malaysian economy and electricity generation sources. The first concept introduced to Malaysia was Small Renewable Energy Power Program (SREP) which then expanded into the latest and largest scheme which is Large Scale Solar 4 (LSS Mentari). This concept encourages the export of Solar Photovoltaic (PV) as the renewable energy generation to national grid at a fixed rate for 21 years contract by independent power provider (IPP). Ministry of Environment and Water Malaysia (KASA) has promoted the rainwater as the source of potable water products to create more opportunities for large scale rainwater catchment concept using the existing LSS infrastructures with some modifications and storage facility. The effort to prevent rainwater from flowing through drainage system would also reduce the risk of stormwater flooding especially in dense urban population. This paper implies Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping for the potential rainwater harvesting (RWH) approach under the LSS scheme by indicating the catchment area and projected rainwater collection for each LSS site in Peninsular Malaysia.