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In this paper, a combination of Geographic Information System (GIS) and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been done to assess the capacity of Eastern Morocco to host large-scale Photovoltaic (PV) farms. For this reason, a GIS database with high spatial resolution has been built using data and layers provided from different governmental organizations. Besides, and in order to pursue high accuracy results, the Global Horizontal Irradiation (GHI) solar map used in this study was derived from a high quality satellite map with a spatial resolution of 1 km/pixel and twenty years of time coverage.

Results show that from the entire region’s surface, the highly suitable sites to host PV farms make up 19%, while the unsuitable sites represent 15%. With those results our field of study can be very competitive-in comparison to neighboring countries like Spain-to attract investors in the field. Which will lead to an economical and sustainable development of the region by creating new jobs and producing green electricity. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.