Multi-Criteria Decision Support Methods for Renewable Energy Systems on Islands

Abstract

Abstract-Islands often are confronted with severe energy challenges especially those far from the main land which operate as isolated energy systems. In those cases electricity, the queen of the energy vectors shall be obtained from diversified sources to alleviate the burden of the dependence on fossil fuels. Thereby, the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources in combination with electricity storage becomes an irrecusably challenge in the nearby future. Often a variety of criteria can be applied to identify the suitability of technologies, whereas no ideal family of criteria has been defined in the literature. Hence, decision support for energy planning and management is required. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art of multi-criteria decision support methods applied to renewable energy and storage technologies. It will be analyzed where the current focus is placed on. The gaps of those analyzed studies will be evaluated and key aspects for future energy planning considerations for islands will be proposed. Finally, an outlook for a newly developed concept for island energy planning will be presented. Indeed, for most isolated islands renewable energy technologies in combination with storage devices are a desirable and valued solution for sustainable development.Index Terms-Island energy planning, multi-criteria decision support methods, renewable energy technologies, sustainable development. I. INTRODUCTIONIslands face diverse similarities in terms of their energy problems. Apart from their insularity and often not being grid-connected to the mainland energy network there are commonly social issues caused by not having sufficient energy, i.e. a high degree of young people unemployment that causes a trend of immigration, a lack of specialized work force, different levels of population density or a conservative mentality [1]. Plus, often welfare of islands depends on specific industries, mainly tourism, fishing and local businesses [2]. Even though tourism generates financial benefits, it is also the main driver for another problem; that of an increasing and highly season-depended energy and water demand [1], [3], [4]. Indeed, during the peak summer season many islands are confronted with energy security issues [5]. In correlation with tourism a high variation in the number of island inhabitants occurs [4], which during the main season might exceed that of the off-peak season by a few times [6]. Manuscript received February 15, 2014; revised June 24, 2014. C. Wimmler and G. Hejazi are with the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Porto, golnar.hejazi@fe.up.pt).E. de Oliveira Fernandes is with the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Porto, Porto,.C. Moreira is with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of Porto, Porto,.S. Connors is with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139-4307, USA (email: connorsr@mit.edu).Considering that the energy demand will continue growing steadily in the next decades, precise energy planning and management...

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