Evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security: Multi-criteria decision analysis approach

Abstract

Electricity supply plays a significantly important role in national economy and society development. Accordingly, the evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security as an early warning method is beneficial for the decision-makers/policy-makers to take various measures to enhance electricity supply sustainability and security. This study aims at developing a multi-criteria decision analysis framework for electricity supply sustainability and security evaluation, and a total of nine metrics (i.e. Shannon-Weiner index, electricity import dependence, supply adequacy, rural electrification rate, electric power losses ratio, residential consumption ratio, electricity per Gross Domestic Product, electric power consumption per capita, and fossil fuel dependence) in four dimensions including availability and security of supply, affordability and reliability, energy and economic efficiency, and environmental stewardship were employed for electricity supply sustainability and security evaluation. Fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process which allows the users to use linguistic terms to express their opinions was used to determine the weights of the criteria which represent their relative importance in the evaluation of electricity supply sustainability and security. Grey Rational Analysis was used to prioritize the status of electricity supply sustainability and security of different countries in different years. The electricity supply sustainability and security of the five major emerging national economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) was studied in Chinese perspective by the proposed method.