AN AHP APPLICATION IN THE INVESTMENT SELECTION PROBLEM OF SMALL HYDROPOWER PLANTS IN TURKEY

Abstract

<p>Turkey is a country that has had to deal with high electricity consumption due to its rapid growth and development. Attempts have been made to address this increase in demand by increasing the electricity supply by means such as boosting resources by privatization. The electricity generation sector has been privatized in Turkey; hence investors have been looking for the most appropriate electricity generation projects for a long while. Therefore, researchers and practitioners should focus on how the most suitable small hydropower plant project (SHPP) investments can be selected. In this study, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was applied to make the most appropriate and satisfying decision according to the decision makers, experts or investors for a SHPP investment from amongst some alternative SHPP investments in Turkey. All of these SHPPs were assumed to be in the pre-development investment stage, which indicated that their pre-feasibility and feasibility studies had not been presented or taken into consideration until this study was performed. This main constraint forced the researchers to obtain the data and information from the information forms such as the application document to the General Directorate of State Hydraulic Works during the data and information gathering process. The AHP model of this study was structured in four levels with five main criteria, seventeen basic criteria and five alternatives on the Super Decisions Software. The results indicated that Alternative 1 and Alternative 5 should be primarily investigated in detail in subsequent SHPP investment investigation steps.</p>