Applying a Combination of AHP, ANP, and PROMETHEE Methods to Find the Optimal Location for Solar Power Plant

Abstract

One of the well-known renewable energy resources is solar energy which has been developed rapidly in recent years. Turkey is one of the high energy consumer countries where has a good potential for using solar power due to its geographical location. Choosing the right location is one of the main issues related to the solar power plant problem. The main objective of this study is to select the optimal location to install a solar power plant among the five cities (Antalya, Nigde, Konya, Mersin, and Isparta) in the south of Turkey, which all of them are considered as potential locations because of receiving a high amount of solar radiation. To accomplish this task, three well-known multi-criteria decision-making methods (AHP, ANP, and PROMETHEE) are used to find the best location considering six different criteria. To simplify and improve the accuracy of calculation, SuperDecisions and VisualPROMETHEE Programs are utilized for analyzing the data. The program results show that Mersin is selected as the best location and the second one is Antalya. Besides, the lowest scored city is Nigde which is considered as the least preferred alternative.