Multi-attribute decision making approach for strategic planning of DGs

The distributed energy sources technology has progressed from isolated operation to hybrid and now to microgrid operation. The planning strategies initially considered cost-benefit analysis of distributed generation (DG). Later supporting advantages of the hybrid system including improvement of the efficiency were also considered for decision making. With increased complexities in DGs planning options along with multiple attributes to be accounted, more sophisticated techniques are needed to arrive at the correct decisions by decision makers. The analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is proposed to identify the relative significance of the chosen attributes. Proper integration of different attributes can be achieved by linear additive utility function. Further, the uncertainties are accounted by statistical method like interval based multi-attribute decision making (MADM). MADM technique is applied to three cases: conventional grid, hybrid DG operation and micro-grid. The attributes considered are incremental losses, capital costs and percentage time for which demand is not served for ail cases. It is assumed that attributes are not related with each other. The proposed method is demonstrated on a sample system which is derived from a practical system. The effect of loading condition is also considered in the formulation. The results indicate that the proposed decision making technique has an ability to quantify the merits and justify new technology. It is demonstrated that DGs in micro-grid as well as hybrid system are acceptable strategies for low load conditions since they have very small variance of composite distance.