Evaluating electric power generation technologies: A multicriteria analysis based on the FITradeoff method

Evaluating which electric power generation technologies should comprise the electricity matrix of a country has become a worldwide issue. Multiple factors should be taken into account and issues such as those to do with social, economic and environmental aspects have to be considered in the decision process. In this paper a decision model based on the FITradeoff method is proposed in order to aid multicriteria decision making in the energy planning context. The originality of the paper comes from accommodating, in the proposed model, situations in which the available information is incomplete, when evaluating electric power generation technologies. In order to illustrate the applicability of the model, eight different electrical energy technologies that form the current Brazilian electricity matrix are evaluated under four dimensions: financial, technical, environmental and socio-economic. A sensitivity analysis was performed in order to check the robustness of the results obtained. The application of the proposed model provides information that could be used in Brazil when drawing up energy policies, thus showing the potential use of the method to solve related problems.