Sensitivity analysis of the evaluation of power plants impact on the living standard using the analytic hierarchy process

Abstract

Ten types of power plant were evaluated as to their impact on the living standard. Power plant evaluation incorporates a number of criteria that can be assessed either objectively or subjectively. Objective assessments are usually quantitative and are based on real data, while subjective assessments are rather qualitative and derive from decision makers’ intuition, culture and experience. Because of diversity of decision makers’ opinions, subjective assessments are due to vary. Several scenarios should therefore be examined in order to evaluate what happens under different assessments. Even objective assessments can vary because of data changes due to technology and socioeconomic evolution. This is why the application of a sensitivity analysis is required in order to examine result changes under different input data. This analysis should cover all criteria and subcriteria as well as their possible combinations in the different levels of the hierarchy tree. The results show that the five types of renewable energy based power plant rank in the first five positions regardless of criteria weight variations, due to their balanced high scores against them. Only biomass drops to the eighth position when quality of life has 100% weight. Nuclear power plants show impressive score and ranking variations between the first position for 100% quality of life weight and the tenth for 100% socioeconomic aspects weight. Natural gas based power plants rank slightly higher when quality of life importance increases while coal/lignite and oil have slightly better rankings when priority is given to socioeconomic aspects.