A Two-Stage Fuzzy Comprehensive Assessment Model for Sustainability Evaluation of Small Hydropower

China has the most technically utilizable small hydropower around the world. The government have taken the policies of efficiency improvement, capacity expansion, refurbishment and value added to implement the 40% potentials and over 47,000 existing stations. Researching on the sustainability of SHP could provide an approach to determine whether the designed SHP is sustainable and how it can be developed. Therefore, a sustainability evaluation index system with three grade indicators was firstly proposed to illustrate what a sustainable SHP should considered. Then a two-stage comprehensive assessment model was used to solve the multi factorial evaluation problem. Lastly, the sustainability evaluation of eight cascade SHP stations were conducted using the proposed method, and the development subsequence and policy was given according to the calculated ranks.