Developing renewable energy alternative resources evaluation model based on multiple criteria

Abstract

The variation in cost to develop renewable energy resources and the interest from stakeholders to consider various evaluating criteria before implementing renewable energy alternatives is attracting interest from researchers. Though cost is the leading factor to be considered for the selection of renewable energy alternatives, it is also equally important to address other criteria such as useful life of the project, operation and maintenance of the given alternatives, the impact of alternatives to the society and other factors. The number of alternative renewable energy resources to be considered and the number of evaluating criteria depends on the involvement of various stakeholders. This paper focuses on developing renewable energy alternative resources evaluating model considering multiple criteria. The proposed model optimize each renewable energy alternative resources considering cost as prime factor and evaluate the alternatives under different criteria using Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) method for generating comprehensive ranking for all alternatives. The model has been tested based on a region having a demand of 620 MWh per year. Five alternative renewable energy resources have been evaluated based on six criteria. The alternative which includes a combination of wind to supply 72.58% and biomass to supply 27.42% of energy requirement ranked as the best option considering all criteria. The model can also be extended to any regions taking into account the local data and availability of resources for the selected areas.