Evaluating and Selecting Renewable Energy Sources for a Microgrid: A Bi-Capacity-Based Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach
Ling Zhang, Fandi Wang, Yan Xu, Chung‐Hsing Yeh, Peng Zhou
Abstract
Renewable energy (RE) microgrids are considered one solution for solving the increasing electricity demand and environmental pollution problem. Selecting RE sources for a microgrid plays a crucial role in determining the performance of the microgrid. Illustrated with an empirical study on a city's microgrid project, this article proposes a new evaluation approach with a bi-capacity based multi-criteria decision making method called Bi-ELECTRE to evaluate and select RE source alternatives based on interacting performance indicators with bipolar measurement. With the novelty of the Bi-ELECTRE method, this article addresses the questions of (a) how to measure interactions between bipolar-scaled indicators when evaluating the RE source alternatives of a microgrid, and (b) how to determine the optimal combination of RE sources for a microgrid. The results from the empirical study suggest that a microgrid with a single RE source has the worst performance, compared with multi-source alternatives. In the empirical study conducted, the microgrid using a RE source combination of 20% wind, 30% solar, and 50% biomass has the best overall performance. By considering interactions between bipolar-scaled indicators and various combinations of RE sources, the proposed approach contributes to MCDM research methodologically and to the RE source selection problem for a microgrid practically.