Multi-criteria decision analysis for renewable energy integration: A southern India focus

In recent days, sustainability is considered as an important mechanism due to contemporary increase in demands and worldwide limited resources. This paper presents the possibility of integrating a renewable energy system with an existing grid to meet electrical energy demand of institutional buildings located in Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Currently, the Tamil Nadu state electric-grid power is not surplus and experiencing 40% short fall in generation. In this present paper a modern approach for the optimum planning of electric power system (EPS) is proposed based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). An intertwined analysis on energy management and techno-economic optimization of grid connected renewable energy system is proposed. The prospects of different fixed tilt solar panels and peak load shifting based energy management are performed through HOMER Energy® simulation. The AHP multi-criteria decision analysis reveals that annual optimum tilt grid connected photovoltaic system is the optimum configuration for study location. The effectiveness of the AHP approach is evaluated with best-worst method and stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis for prioritizing the renewable energy system options in order to select best EPS. In addition, the optimum configuration is implemented in the institutional buildings and performance is analyzed under varying climatic conditions.