Application of multicriteria decision methods for electric supply planning in rural and remote areas

Multi-criteria decision-making methods have emerged as a very useful tool to find solutions under different criteria or conflicting points of view, also in energy planning. However, social and environmental criteria have not been fully integrated in rural electrification projects design and play often an opposing role to technical and economic criteria. We propose the combined application of two multi-criteria decision-making methods, namely, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Compromise Ranking method (VIKOR), to facilitate the selection of the best solution for electrical supply of remote rural locations, involving technical, economic, environmental and social criteria. A group of experts were consulted for weighting the preferences of the criteria, sub-criteria and category of deciders. Thirteen discrete alternatives were proposed; the first six were associated with optimal multi-objective solutions pertaining to dispersed decentralized generation and another six multi-objective options to compact decentralized generation (CDG), and last, extension of the public electric grid was considered. The results reveal that the combination of multi-criteria methods facilitates decision-making in a manner that is robust, comprehensive, transparent and coherent to sustainable development requirements. CDG resulted in the best model of electrical supply.