Multi Criteria Selection of RETs Sites Using Simple Additive Weighting (SAW)

Multi Criteria Selection of RETs Sites Using Simple Additive Weighting (SAW)

Presenter: Mary Suzan Abbo and Izael Pereira Da Silva

Presentation

One of the critical steps in developing a Renewable Energy Technologies (RETs) project is to find a suitable site and assess its feasibility for development. This paper uses the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) scoring method to determine various renewable energy sites for development under the Millennium Science Initiative (MSI) project for rural electrification, sponsored by Uganda National Council for Science and Technology (UNCST). SAW is one of the most linear multi criteria decision analysis techniques that uses regular arithmetical operations. In this research, a desk study of possible sites was done as a first step and 20 sites were visited for primary data collection using designed questionnaires for group meetings and target persons in the second step. The SAW technique adequately checks site suitability for different RETs and in this research, the tool successfully ranked the top six sites which were consequently developed. The results present the scores for all the sites based on attributes including demand, fuel or source of energy, technology, application of electricity and the human factors. The RETs installed include a solar PV energy kiosk, a solar PV mini grid, a pico-hydro mini grid, and three gasification plants.

References

Mary Suzan Abbo and Izael Pereira Da Silva: Micro Perspective for Decentralized Energy (MES) 2015, Bangalore, India.