A Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach to Determine the Optimal Hybrid Energy System in Coastal Off-Grid Areas: A Case Study of Bangladesh

The coastal areas of Bangladesh have a number of off-grid locations, which are out of national grid coverage. Therefore, off-grid technology is the only solution to electrify those areas. At present, solar home system (SHS) is playing pivotal role to fulfil the electricity demand and, also, contributing to the community both economically and socially. However, due to the technical, economic, environmental and social maturity, hybrid energy system (HES) could be more lucrative in the off-grid areas of Bangladesh. Therefore, proper selection of the HES is highly essential. In this study, the focus is given on the coastal off-grid regions to select the optimal HES using the multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method. Based on the potentiality of renewable energy resources, six HES alternatives were selected for evaluation. To evaluate the HESs, thirteen criteria were selected based on experts' agreement, and to check this agreement, content validity was estimated. In addition, criteria importance through intercriteria correlation (CRITIC) method was deployed to find the weights of the criteria. Finally, a new MCDM method named combinative distance-based assessment (CODAS) was applied to select the optimum HES. The results revealed that the PV/battery/biogas/diesel generator HES is the optimum solution for the study area.