DOI: 10.62520/fujece.1995442 ISSN: 2822-2881

Energy–Climate Pre-Screening Of Rural PV Candidate Points In Türkiye: GHI And Model-Derived AC Specific-Yield Rankings and Shortlist Stability

Mehmet Sena Kaşka
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Global horizontal irradiance (GHI) is useful for broad photovoltaic resource pre-screening, but it does not alone represent plane-of-array irradiance, operating temperature, wind cooling, inverter conversion, and system losses embedded in alternating-current (AC) yield models. This study compares GHI-based and climate-adjusted, model-derived AC specific-yield rankings as an energy–climate pre-screening exercise; it neither identifies investment-ready sites nor independently validates energy yield. One rural candidate point was algorithmically selected in each of Türkiye’s 81 provinces. Hourly NASA POWER inputs for 2001–2025 were processed through a common south-facing Perez–SAPM–PVWatts chain with a fixed 30° tilt and 1 MWp DC capacity. The GHI-only descriptive auxiliary model yielded an adjusted R²=0.940, and adding air temperature, wind, and elevation reduced in-sample RMSE by 50.61%. Pearson and Spearman coefficients were r=0.9697 and ρ=0.9283, respectively; however, the mean absolute rank difference was 6.12 positions, the maximum difference was 27, and the Top-10 replacement rate was 40%. Nevertheless, the mean model-derived AC specific yield of the GHI-selected Top-10 was only 0.70% below that of the AC-selected Top-10. A common-year bootstrap produced Top-10 inclusion frequencies of at least 99.3% for six candidates, whereas leave-one-region-out sensitivity results were heterogeneous. These frequencies describe model-conditional stability under resampling of the observed 2001–2025 meteorological years, not probabilities of future investment success. The findings support GHI for broad pre-screening while indicating that shortlists should be supplemented with climate-adjusted model outputs, ranking uncertainty, and site-specific assessment of grid, land, legal, environmental, geotechnical, access, permitting, and economic conditions.

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