Selecting Renewable Energy Technology via a Fuzzy MCDM Approach

Renewable energy technology selection, which has a strategic importance for many countries and companies, is one of the most challenging decisions due to the complex features and large number of alternatives. Of all renewable energy sources, solar photovoltaic (PV) energy has attracted more attention as the greatest promising option for industrial application. This paper proposes an extension of fuzzy multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach for selecting solar PV energy technologies. In the proposed approach, several PV technologies are used as the alternatives. The ratings of alternatives - PV technologies under various criteria and the weights of criteria are assessed in linguistic terms represented by fuzzy numbers. These values are further averaged and normalized into a comparable scale. Then, the normalized weighted rating can be derived by interval arithmetic of fuzzy numbers. To avoid complicated aggregation of fuzzy numbers, these normalized weighted ratings are defuzzified into crisp values using the left and right indices ranking approach. Finally, this study applies the proposed fuzzy MCDM approach to solve a PV technologies selection problem, demonstrating its applicability and computational process.