A robust decision-making approach for the selection of an optimal renewable energy source in India

Abstract

The evaluation of alternate energy sources to select an appropriate one has always been an important matter of consideration for investors and project engineers, especially for developing countries like India. This necessitates the need for a robust approach where the scope of the decision making process increases and the results can be analysed through different perspectives in scrutiny. This study presents a novel robust approach to assist in the decision making process in the field of sustainable energy and uses India as a case study to define the scope for India's renewable energy development. It implements Entropy and CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation criteria weighting methods and eight distinct multi criteria decision making methods to rank the renewable energy sources so as to select the optimal one. The ranking results establish solar to be the best alternative for energy production in India. Wind and biomass stand at second and third places interchangeably in the aggregate rankings obtained in the case of Entropy and CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation weights, whereas hydro is ranked last. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is carried out to check the influence of the criteria weights on the decision, and to measure the stability and robustness of the methods used in this approach.