Planning stand-alone electricity generation systems, a multiple objective optimization and fuzzy decision making approach

This paper presents a fuzzy-multiple objective optimization methodology to plan stand-alone electricity generation systems. The optimization process considers three main objectives, namely technology cost, environmental and societal impacts. For each feasible solution of the Pareto set, a system reliability index is evaluated along the lifetime of the project. As a key contribution, the decision making process is carried out by applying a fuzzy satisfaction method (FSM). The FSM accounts simultaneously four key performance indexes (KPI): technical, economic, environmental and social. The novelty of the proposal lies on the inclusion of societal impact (local wealth creation) in the FSM used here to select the more appropriate solution. Previous contributions on FSM only accounts two of four indexes considered in this paper. The methodology was applied in a Colombian case study. The results show the importance of the simultaneous consideration of technical, economic, environmental and social objectives in the evaluation of off-grid energization solutions.