Selection of Best Operating Site of SHP Plant based on Performance

Energy is an essential element of socio-economic development and electricity is one of the most widely used forms of energy. There is world over attention on harnessing more and more renewable energy sources due to rising cost of fossil fuels based electricity. Among all the renewable energy sources, small hydro power (SHP) is considered to be one of the most environmental friendly cost-effective energy technologies for generation of electrical power. Economic viability of a SHP project is very important along with its technical feasibility for taking investment decision. In this paper, an attempt has been made to evaluate the performance of some existing SHP plants considering the parameters like generation cost, operating cost, maintenance cost, shortage of generation and percentage variation in generation to select best operating plant. Multiple Attribute Decision Making (MADM) method has been used for evaluation of the plant performance and selection of the best operating SHP plant.