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22 pages, 1932 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Unveiling the Decision-Making Dilemmas in Mini-Grids: The Intricate Case of Smart Meters

by Venkata Bandi, Tiia Sahrakorpi, Jukka V. Paatero and Risto Lahdelma

Energies 2023, 16(17), 6112; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16176112 - 22 Aug 2023

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1574

Mini-grids need to imitate the transition path of a traditional grid to maintain their position as a sustainable energy access alternative, while aligning with the objectives of the seventh Sustainable Development Goal. One such strategy is implementing smart-metering solutions to improve business viability and remote monitoring of distributed mini-grid assets. However, selecting smart meters presents a significant challenge for mini-grid operators, primarily due to the installation costs involved and the complexities associated with operating mini-grids in rural areas. Against this backdrop, the current case study’ demonstrates the utility of multi-criteria decision aids, such as stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA), to assist mini-grid operators in making informed decisions concerning smart-meter selection. In addition, practitioners’ narratives elucidate how implementing smart metering can function as part of mini-grid operations in rural areas. Furthermore, narratives highlight the importance of considering context-specific conditions to avoid the under-utilisation of smart meters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Microgrids: Operation, Control and Applications)

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20 pages, 3231 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Multicriteria Decision Aiding for Planning Renewable Power Production at Moroccan Airports

by Abdellah Menou, Risto Lahdelma and Pekka Salminen

Energies 2022, 15(14), 5271; https://doi.org/10.3390/en15145271 - 20 Jul 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2833

Abstract

This study is about multicriteria decision aiding (MCDA) for the green airports program of the Moroccan Airport Authority ONDA. The goal of the program is to develop significant amounts of renewable power at airports. In particular, ONDA wants to select airports at which large solar and wind power parks should be built. Multiple criteria, including economy, technical feasibility, and environmental concerns, must be considered simultaneously. In this study, we apply Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA) for ranking the candidates to be developed into green airports. The analysis is conducted in phases with different sets of criteria. This study is the first application of MCDA for developing large-scale renewable energy production at airports. As a theoretical novelty, the pairwise winning indices of SMAA are used to form stochastic partial and complete rankings of the alternatives. Based on the results, two alternatives obtain the best and second-best rank in every model, and one alternative is always last, while the ranks of the remaining alternatives vary depending on the set of criteria. Full article

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25 pages, 2306 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Stochastic Dominance-Based Approach for Hotel Selection under Probabilistic Linguistic Environment

by Su-min Yu, Zhi-jiao Du, Xu-dong Lin, Han-yang Luo and Jian-qiang Wang

Mathematics 2020, 8(9), 1525; https://doi.org/10.3390/math8091525 - 7 Sep 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 2524

Abstract

Online reviews of hotels reflect tourist perception and evaluation, which are becoming an important perspective of studying hotel selection. In this paper, we prefer to use a probabilistic linguistic term set (PLTS) to fully reveal evaluation grades and the corresponding probability distribution in the online reviews of hotels. In this way, we propose a novel stochastic dominance-based approach based on stochastic dominance degrees of PLTSs and a stochastic multi-criteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) method that tolerates missing information. Among them, first-, second-, and third-order stochastic dominance degrees of PLTSs are calculated on the premise that the dominance relationships between PLTSs can be defined based on first-, second-, and third-order stochastic dominance rules of PLTSs. Based on these basic researches, five hotels are selected as alternatives in our case study to verify the validity and feasibility of the proposed approach. In the end, data analysis illustrates the influence of parameter and linguistic scale functions and how to choose appropriate parameter values. Furthermore, comparative analysis with other methods shows the stability of the proposed approach. Full article

(This article belongs to the Section D2: Operations Research and Fuzzy Decision Making)

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19 pages, 3155 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimization and Multicriteria Evaluation of Carbon-neutral Technologies for District Heating

by Giuseppe Pinto, Elnaz Abdollahi, Alfonso Capozzoli, Laura Savoldi and Risto Lahdelma

Energies 2019, 12(9), 1653; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12091653 - 30 Apr 2019

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 3947

Abstract

The imperative to reduce emissions to counteract climate change has led to the use of renewables progressively in more areas. Looking at district heating, there is a growing interest in coupling current production systems and carbon-neutral technologies. This paper presents a methodology to support decision making about carbon-neutral technologies for district heating. The process is organized in two stages, the first one aims at optimizing the different carbon-neutral technologies according to an objective function and assess uncertainties and dependencies. In the second stage, the alternatives are evaluated using Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis (SMAA), a simulation-based method specifically designed to consider imprecise information. The methodology was applied to a case-study in Torino, Italy, which simulates the city district heating network at a smaller scale, with the aim to explore strategies for replacing gas boiler with more sustainable technologies. According to preference information provided by decision makers, the most preferred alternative resulted in the introduction of a solar heat plant combined with an increase size of daily heat storage. Solar heat can benefit from incentives while reducing operational costs and emissions, maximizing the use of carbon-neutral heat thanks to the storage. Full article

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25 pages, 2402 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Combining an Extended SMAA-2 Method with Integer Linear Programming for Task Assignment of Multi-UCAV under Multiple Uncertainties

by Jun Wang, Pengcheng Luo, Xinwu Hu and Xiaonan Zhang

Symmetry 2018, 10(11), 587; https://doi.org/10.3390/sym10110587 - 2 Nov 2018

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 3472

Abstract

Uncertainty should be taken into account when establishing multiobjective task assignment models for multiple unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs) due to errors in the target information acquired by sensors, implicit preferences of the commander for operational objectives, and partially known weights of sensors. In this paper, we extend the stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis-2 (SMAA-2) method and combine it with integer linear programming to achieve multiobjective task assignment for multi-UCAV under multiple uncertainties. We first represent the uncertain target information as normal distribution interval numbers so that the values of criteria (operational objectives) concerned can be computed based on the weighted arithmetic averaging operator. Thus, we obtain multiple criteria value matrices for each UCAV. Then, we propose a novel aggregation method to generate the final criteria value matrix based on which the holistic acceptability indices are computed by the extended SMAA-2 method. On this basis, we convert the task assignment model with uncertain parameters into an integer linear programming model without uncertainty so as to implement task assignment using the integer linear programming method. Finally, we conduct a case study and demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method in solving the multiobjective task assignment problem multi-UCAV under multiple uncertainties. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Multi-Criteria Decision Aid methods in fuzzy decision problems)

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20 pages, 663 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Stochastic Multicriteria Acceptability Analysis for Evaluation of Combined Heat and Power Units

by Haichao Wang, Wenling Jiao, Risto Lahdelma, Chuanzhi Zhu and Pinghua Zou

Energies 2015, 8(1), 59-78; https://doi.org/10.3390/en8010059 - 24 Dec 2014

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 6526

Abstract

Combined heat and power (CHP) is a promising technology that can contribute to energy efficiency and environmental protection. More CHP-based energy systems are planned for the future. This makes the evaluation and selection of CHP systems very important. In this paper, 16 CHP units representing different technologies are taken into account for multicriteria evaluation with respect to the end users’ requirements. These CHP technologies cover a wide range of power outputs and fuel types. They are evaluated from the energy, economy and environment (3E) points of view, specifically including the criteria of efficiency, investment cost, electricity cost, heat cost, CO₂ production and footprint. Uncertainties and imprecision are common both in criteria measurements and weights, therefore the stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA) model is used in aiding this decision making problem. These uncertainties are treated better using a probability distribution function and Monte Carlo simulation in the model. Moreover, the idea of “feasible weight space (FWS)” which represents the union of all preference information from decision makers (DMs) is proposed. A complementary judgment matrix (CJM) is introduced to determine the FWS. It can be found that the idea of FWS plus CJM is well compatible with SMAA and thus make the evaluation reliable. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Selected Papers from ECOS 2014 — the 27st International Conference on Efficiency, Cost, Optimization, Simulation and Environmental Impact of Energy Systems)

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