Multi-criteria decision aid to assess concentrated solar thermal technologies

There are now several concentrated solar thermal technologies (CSP), such as parabolic troughs and central receivers using various heat transfer media, that have reached the phase of initial commercial deployment for large-scale power production. Information about cost, performance and impact on the environment of the systems being analyzed is currently affected by uncertainty. In many cases, traditional evaluation methods such as cost-benefit analysis and the main economic and financial indicators (LEC, NPV, ROI, IRR,- etc.) are unable to deal with all the components involved in a valid energy project. Multi-criteria methods provide a flexible tool that is able to handle and bring together a wide range of variables appraised in different ways and thus offer useful assistance to the decision maker in mapping out the problem. This paper sets out the application of a multi-criteria method to make a preliminary assessment of CSP technologies. As this work demonstrates, multi-criteria analysis can provide a technical-scientific decision making support tool that is able to justify its choices clearly and consistently, especially in the renewable energy sector. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.