Selecting an Appropriate Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Technique for Renewable Energy Planning

This article develops a methodological framework to provide insights regarding the suitability of multi-criteria techniques in the context of renewable energy planning. The second section presents main characteristics of the particular decision-making process. The third section presents the main multi-criteria analysis methods, and the fourth section reveals the requirements of the techniques for renewable energy planning and the main attributes under which these methods should be evaluated. Subsequently, in the fifth section, a comparative matrix is created with the various appropriate multi-criteria techniques and their performance. Finally in the sixth sec tion, we present our conclusions.

Keywords:

• renewable energy planning
• decision-making
• multicriteria decision analysis

Acknowledgments

This research has been financed by the European Commission, research project: “Development and Application of a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Software Tool for Renewable Energy Sources,” Acronym: MCDA-RES, Contract No: NNE5-2001-273.