An integrated grey based multi-criteria decision making approach for the evaluation of renewable energy sources

Renewable energy sources are important alternatives that should be considered in forming energy portfolio of countries. Countries need to carefully plan and select the most appropriate energy sources to be able to sustain their social and economic development. This study presents a grey based multi-criteria decision model for the evaluation of renewable energy sources which integrates three multi-criteria decision making methods that are Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory, Analytic Network Process and multi-criteria optimization and compromise solution (Serbian name: VlseKriterijumska Optimizacija I Kompromisno Resenje) methods. Grey Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory method is used to for revealing the relations among the evaluation criteria. The result of the grey Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory is then used for constructing the network structure of the Analytic Network Process. The importance or weights of the evaluation criteria are calculated with grey Analytic Network Process based on the experts' assessments. Finally, evaluation and ranking of the renewable energy sources are performed by using the proposed grey multi-criteria optimization and compromise solution method. The effectiveness and the applicability of the developed approach are presented with a case study. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.