Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Energy Conversion and Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Multi-criteria decision making on selection of solar–wind hybrid power

station location: A case of China
Yunna Wu, Shuai Geng ⇑
North China Electric Power University, Beijing, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Site selection plays an important role in the entire life cycle of solar–wind hybrid power station (SWHPS)
Received 25 September 2013 project and is worthy to further study. There are problems in the present researches: first, the SWHPS site
Accepted 24 February 2014 evaluation results are difficult to be understood by the project managers due to the evaluations of SWHPS
Available online 19 March 2014
site are few from the perspective of project management. Second, the independence of experts is difficult
to be protected since the undefined duties of roles in the evaluation process Third, the project managers
Keywords: cannot consider the alternatives thoroughly because that the evaluation result is single. Hence the inno-
Site selection
vativeness of this paper is as follows: first, the evaluation attributes of SWHPS site selection are summa-
Solar–wind hybrid power station (SWHPS)
Evaluation attribute
rized from the perspective of project management; second, the duties of roles in the decision process are
The duties of roles defined; third, according to the principle of practicality, a decision framework of SWHPS site selection is
Ranking built based on the analytic hierarchy process method, the merits of this decision framework are that it
China can provide various rankings of alternatives and is easy to be used. Finally, a case study of China demon-
strates the effectiveness of decision framework.
Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the rapid development of Chinese economy and the
awareness of environmental protection, the traditional fossil fuels
cannot meet China’s energy demand. The solar–wind hybrid power
station (SWHPS) which relies on solar or wind energy to generate
power comes into being. In the entire life cycle of SWHPS, the site
selection is important and determines the future electric energy
production and the socio-economic values of the power station.
At present, a few academic literatures concern on this area, such
as Aydin et al. [1]use Geographic Information System (GIS) and fuz-
zy decision-making procedure to select the optimal site for SWHPS,
Yunna et al. [2] use the ideal matter-factor model to select the
macro-site of SWHPS. However, the most researches pay more
attention to the power system and auxiliary facilities of SWHPS,
such as Ayodele [3] studies the wind distribution and capacity fac-
tor estimation for wind turbines in the coastal region of South Afri-
ca, Chen et al. [4,5] use the Analytic Network Process (ANP) to
evaluate the hybrid solar–wind power generation system and fee-
der management system. Moreover, there are still problems in the
SWHPS site selection.
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 18618108786.
E-mail address: gengshuai1208@163.com (S. Geng).
First, the SWHPS site evaluation results are difficult to be under-
stood by the project managers. The most evaluations of SWHPS site
are from the perspective of the experts and technicists in the rele-
vant energy fields, so the evaluation results are difficult to be
understood by the project managers who do not have much knowl-
edge of energy fields compared with the experts and technicists.
Because of this reason, the usability of the evaluation result is
limited.
Second, the independence of experts is difficult to be protected.
It is well known that the judgments of experts are easy to be influ-
enced by the opinions of the project managers, which will lower
the scientificity of evaluation results and increase the probability
of decision-making mistake. Meanwhile, when the decision-
making mistake happens, it will be difficult to investigate
responsibility.
Third, the project managers cannot consider the alternative
sites thoroughly according to the evaluation result. Many decision
frameworks of site selection only provide the ranking of the alter-
natives under the overall goal. So the project managers are difficult
to consider the alternatives thoroughly for lack of the detail infor-
mation of the alternatives. This will also increase the probability of
decision-making mistake.
According to the site selection researches of wind power station
and solar power station, this paper firstly summarizes the evalua-
tion attributes of SWHPS site selection from the perspective of

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2014.02.056
0196-8904/Ó 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
528 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533

project management to improve the usability of evaluation result;
Second, at the condition that the strategic goals can be fully satis-
fied, the duties of roles in the decision process are defined to pro-
tect the independence of experts in order to ensure the scientificity
and decrease the probability of decision-making mistake. Then a
decision framework of SWHPS site selection is established based
on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method due to its practica-
bility. This decision framework provides not only the ranking of
alternative SWHPS sites under the overall goal, but also gives the
rankings under the sub-goals and the evaluation attributes in order
to ensure the reasonability of decision-making. Finally, the effec-
tiveness and practicality of this research are demonstrated through
an example of China.
2. Literature review
Multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) methods have been ap-
plied substantially in the energy fields, such as site selection, pro-
ject evaluation, and equipment evaluation. The common used
methods are AHP, ANP, Technique for Order Preference by Similar-
ity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Elimination et Choice Translating
Reality (ELECTRE), multi-objective programming. For example, Erol
and Kılkısß [6] uses the AHP to analyze the energy source policy,
Liang et al. [7] use ANP to determine method of waste energy re-
cover from engine, Shanian et al. [8] use TOPSIS to select the mate-
rial of metallic bipolar plates for polymer electrolyte fuel cell,
Beccali et al. [9] use ELECTRE to evaluate the energy planning, Zak-
ariazadeh et al. [10] uses multi-objective programming approach
to study the Economic–environmental energy and reserve schedul-
ing of smart distribution systems, the advantages and disadvan-
tages of these methods are shown in Table 1, which is
summarized by Choudhary and Shankar [11]. The most frequently
used method is AHP, because it is the best method to determine
the weights of criteria and experts. In order to reflect the subjective
preferences of experts more precisely, the fuzzy set theory (FST) is
introduced into MCDM method, such as Heo et al. [12] use fuzzy
AHP to evaluate the renewable energy dissemination program,
Amy Lee et al. [13] use fuzzy ANP to evaluate a wind turbine,
and Cavallaro use Fuzzy TOPSIS to assess the thermal-energy stor-
age in concentrated solar power [14]. The FST numbers are seldom
used to express the preferences of experts solely, always are at-
tached with the linguistic terms which are more conveniently used
by experts, such as (perfect (8, 9, 10)), where (8, 9, 10) is the trian-
gular fuzzy number and the ‘‘perfect’’ is the correspondent linguis-
tic term. However, the disadvantages of fuzzy MCDM methods are
as follows: First, the calculations of the fuzzy-MCDM methods are
more complex than the common ones and need the special soft-
ware or decision support system, which lead to increased cost of
decision. Moreover, if the evaluation results of Fuzzy MCDM meth-
ods are equal with those of the common ones, why do we make an
effect to improve the accuracy of preference of experts? Second,
how to reflect the preferences of experts by the FST numbers is still
a difficult problem. Because the FST numbers with respect to the
linguistic terms vary with different experts, need the experts or
special software to measure. But in the most of papers, the FST
numbers with respect to the linguistic terms of different experts
are same, such as (perfect (8,9,10); good (6, 7, 8); medium
(4,5,6)), this does not meet the fact. Thereby, the evaluation results
of fuzzy MCDM method are needed to be checked carefully unless
the linguistic terms of each expert are precisely reflected by the
FST numbers. So according to the aforementioned reasons and con-
sidering the practicality, the paper chooses the AHP method to be
the evaluation method.
3. Analysis of evaluation attributes of SWHPS site selection
In order to achieve the entire life cycle project management of
SWHPS, based on the existing site selection researches of wind
power station or solar power station, we summarize the evaluation
attributes of the SWHPS site selection from five factors of project
management, namely, time, quality, cost, environment and safety.
From the time factor, the accessibility of SWHPS site has great
impact on it. The long connection distance and the unreasonable
connection plan will extend the construction period, delay the be-
gin time of operation and also increase the loss of power
transmission.
Form the quality factor, the amount of wind energy or solar en-
ergy the SWHPS receives at the alternative sites will impact on the
quality of project operation. The wind or solar energy are measured
and evaluated by the relevant energy evaluation criteria, such as
mean wind power density, annual effective utilization time, annual
sunshine hours and annual sunshine radiation amount etc., which
are obtained by the wind or solar monitoring technology combined
with the information technology, such as Djamai et al. [15], Batai-
neh et al. [16] and Serrano González et al. [17] select the wind
power station site by calculating the wind energy of the alternative
sites; Arnette et al. [18], Gómez-Jáuregui et al. [19] and Zhou et al.
[20] select the wind power station site by GIS, etc.
From the cost factor, SWHPS site selection must consider not
only the cost, but also the benefit. Hence, we use the economical

Table 1
The advantages and disadvantages of MCDM methods [11].

AHP Advantages r The consistency of the evaluation procedure can be measured; s it is applicable for quantitative and qualitative criteria; t
it can handle the complex decision problem in practice and theory; u it is easy to be calculated for most managers
Disadvantages Consistency is difficult to achieve when the criteria and alternatives are too many
TOPSIS Advantages r It can measure the distance of the alternatives form the ideal solution; sit can obtain the result which is closest to the ideal
solution; t it is easy to use and understandable
Disadvantages r Normalization is required to solve multi-dimensional problem; s it cannot check the consistency

ANP Advantages r It can be capable of handling feedbacks and interdependencies; s it depicts the dependence and influences of the factors
involved to the goal or higher-level performance objective
Disadvantages Specific software is required to solve it
ELECTRE Advantages r It use thresholds of indifference and preference, and outranking method to make decision; s it is applicable for
quantitative and qualitative criteria; t it is applicable even when there are incomparable alternatives
Disadvantages r It is difficult to conceptualize the problem in absence of hierarchical structure; s it is comparatively difficult to solve than
AHP due to complex computational procedure
Multi-objective Advantages r Model involves linear or nonlinear objective function and constraints; s it may have continuous or integer decision
programming variables that can usually; t it is used when there are large numbers of alternative choices
Disadvantages r It is difficult to solve due to complex computational procedure; s specific software or meta-heuristic approach is required
to solve it; t it is applicable only for quantitative criteria
 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533 529

attribute instead of the cost factor to evaluate the alternative sites. Table 2
There are many literatures study the economical attribute of the The criteria and sub-criteria of SWHPS site selection.

wind or solar power stations from a financial perspective, such as Attribute Criteria Sub-criteria
Snyder et al. [21] analyze the cost and benefit of the offshore wind Accessibility (a) Grid-connection (a1) Connection plan
energy project, weaver et al. [22] study the financial appraisal of (a2) The length of cable(km)
operational offshore wind energy projects, Rezaei Mirghaed et al. (a3) On-grid energy (MWh)
[23] optimize the sizing parameters and farm layout of wind tur- Resource (b) Wind energy resource (b1) Annual mean wind
bines according to the wind resource and economic aspects, Gass speed(m/s)
et al. [24] assess economically viable wind turbine sites under cur- (b2) Mean wind power
density (W/m2)
rent feed-in tariffs considering constraints imposed by infrastruc- (b3) Annual effective
ture, the natural environment and ecological preservation zones utilization time (h)
in Austria. Hence, based on the aforementioned researches, we de- (c) Solar energy resource (c1) Annual Sunshine hours
cide to analyze the economy of SWHPS also from the financial (h)
(c2) Annual sunshine
perspective.
radiation (MJ/m2)
From the environmental factor, the ecological influence of
Economy (d) Cost (d1) Total amount of the
SWHPS on the surrounding area needs to be considered. Clarke’s
SWHPS(ten thousands)
research [25] implicates that the wind power plant will produce (d2) Interest incurred during
noise pollution and Madder et al. [26] shows that the wind power construction(ten thousands)
plant will influence the life of the upland raptors. Meanwhile, the (d3) Pay back period (year)
environmental damage will also happen at the period of SWHPS (e) Benefit (e1) Return on investment (%)
(e2) Net profit on capital(%)
construction, such as water and soil loss or the building debris.
Moreover, SWHPS also impacts on the human society [27], for Risk (f) Social risk (f1) Public security
(f2) Local residential
example, the wind power plant will affect the local tourism indus-
acceptance
try and living standards of local residents. (f3) Policy support
From the safety factor, the social risk has greater impact on the Environment (g) Environmental (g1) Energy-saving benefit:
construction and operation of SWHPS project. The social risk protection standard coal (t/a)
mainly comes from the national energy policy [27,28]. All prov- (g2) Pollutant emission
inces and cities announce their renewable energy promoting plan reduction benefits (t)
(h) The adverse impact on (h1) Noise pollution and light
gradually in order to follow the national energy program in China.
the environment and society pollution
Second, ethnic minorities make up the majority of people and have (h2) Ecological damage
different religions in the western China, so the local public security (h3) Water and soil loss
and the acceptance of local people must be considered when (h4) The impact of local
selecting the optimal SWHPS site [27]. economy and tourism
(h5) The impact of local
In conclusion, from the perspective of project management, the
residential life
alternative SWHPS site should be evaluated from accessibility, re-
source, economical, environmental and risk attributes. The specific
criteria and sub-criteria related to the five attributes are set up
according to the actual situation of alternative sites and experts’
opinions. For example, Table 2 shows the criteria and sub-criteria
with respect to the evaluation attributes in the Chinese case in
Section 5.

4. Decision framework of SWHPS site selection

4.1. Roles in the decision framework

There are three roles in the decision process of the SWHPS site
selection, project managers, expert evaluation committee and aux-
iliary working group, the relationships of them are shown in Fig. 1.
The expert evaluation committee must contain 7–13 experts
whose academic backgrounds involve the energy, engineering,
Fig. 1. The relationships of participants.
economy, environmentology and sociology, etc. The duties of the
three roles can be seen in Table 3.
Through defining the roles and their duties in the decision pro-
alternative SWHPS sites to collect socio-political and other rel-
cess, the project managers’ opinions can only affect the strategic le-
evant information of each site from revenue records and local
vel. Thereby, the independence of judgment of the expert
administration. This aim of these visits is to avoid any possible
evaluation committee can be protected.
delay in getting final approval of chosen optimal sites for set-
ting up the new SWHPS from various State and Central Govern-
4.2. Process of the decision framework ment Departments [13]. Final, the evaluation committee will
determine the alternative SWHPS sites and the problems of
Step 1: Determine the alternative SWHPS sites. The project SWHPS site selection.
managers invite n experts to establish the evaluation commit- Step 2: Determine the investment goals and their priority
tee. Then the evaluation committee firstly uses the satellite weights. The auxiliary working group helps the project manag-
images, traffic map and grid map to select feasible alternative ers to determine an overall investment strategic goal (hereafter
SWHPS sites. Then the evaluation committee visits these referred to as overall goal) and n investment strategic sub-goals
530 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533

Table 3 Step 3: Determine the priority weights of attributes. First, the

The duties of roles. control hierarchy of SWHPS site selection is established, such
Roles Duties as Fig. 2. The control hierarchy consists of the overall goal level,
Project managers 1. Determine the overall goal and sub-goals the sub-goals level and the evaluation attributes level. Then the
2. Determine the priority weights of sub-goals priority weights of the evaluation attributes with respect to the
3. Determine the optimal site of the SWHPS sub-goals are determined by the expert evaluation committee
Expert evaluation 1. Determine the criteria and sub-criteria are respect with the help of auxiliary working group. The specific procedure
committee to five attributes
2. Determine the priority weights of attributes, crite-
in this step is same as that in step 2.
ria and sub-criteria Step 4: Determine the evaluation criteria and sub-criteria and
3. Collect the performance values and evaluate the their priority weights. The SWHPS site selection problems are
alternatives decomposed according to the five evaluation attributes to
Auxiliary working 1. Assist the project manager and expert evaluation
establish the control sub-hierarchy of SWHPS site selection
group committee to perform their duties
2. Prepare the questionnaires and calculate the data with respect to each attribute. Then the priority weights of
in the decision process the criteria and the sub-criteria are determined by the expert
evaluation committee with the help of auxiliary working group.
The specific procedure in this step is same as that in step 2.
Step 5: Normalize the performance value of the alternative
SWHPS locations. Before the evaluation, the performance values
(hereafter referred to as sub-goals). Then a questionnaires with
of the alternative SWHPS locations must be normalized. There
Satty’s nine-point scale is prepared to obtain the importance
are many normalization methods, such as the followed one.
pairwise comparison matrix B of sub-goals with respect to the
overall goal. (
yij =ymax
j ; if sub-criteria is the positive
8 9 zij ¼ ð6Þ
> b11 b12    b1n > ymin
j =yij ; if sub-criteria is the negative
>
> >
>
>
< b21 b22    b2n >
=
B¼ ð1Þ where ymax
j and ymin
j are the biggest and the smallest value among
> ...
>
..
.
..
.
.. >
. > the performance values with respect to the jth sub-criterion
>
> >
>
: ; respectively.
bn1 bn2    bnn
Step 6: Calculate the performance scores of alternatives with
Through the approximation algorithm of the eigenvalue and eigen- respect to each attribute. The performance scores of the alterna-
vector which are shown in Eqs. (1)–(4), the priority weights of sub- tives with respect to five evaluation attributes are calculated by
goals with respect to the overall goal and the principle eigenvalues synthesizing the relative priority weights of criteria with
kmax are calculated. If an inconsistency is found, project managers respect to the same upper level attributes, the relative priority
are asked to revise the questionnaire, and the calculation is done weights of sub-criteria with respect to the same upper level cri-
again. terion, and the relative normalized performance values of alter-
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi natives with respect to each sub-criterion (or criterion).
u n
u Y Step 7: Calculate the performance scores of alternatives with
¼ t bik ;
n
wi i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð2Þ respect to overall goal and sub-goals. The performance scores of
k¼1
the ith alternative with respect to each attribute are normalized
by Eq. (6). Then the performance scores of the alternatives with
X
n
wi ¼ wi = wi ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð3Þ respect to each sub-goal are calculated by multiplying the perfor-
i¼1 mance score of the alternative on each attribute from Step 6 with
the priority weight of the respective attribute with respect to the
X
n sub-goals from Step 4 and summing up the calculated values for
Sk ¼ bik ; k ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n ð4Þ the sub-goals. The performance score of each alternative with
i¼1
respect to the overall goal is calculated by the same way.
X
n
kmax ¼ wi Sk ð5Þ y ¼ yi =sum ð7Þ
i¼1 Pn
where sum ¼ i¼1 yi .

Fig. 2. The control hierarchy of SWHPS site selection.

 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533 531

Table 4 Table 7
The final pairwise comparison of the three sub-goals. The performance values of alternative SWHS sites.

Performance Business Socio-economic Sub-criteria A B C D E

benefit needs
a1 90 85 75 80 90
Performance 1.000 0.549 1.420 a2 16 21 20 15 18
Business benefit 1.821 1.000 1.880 a3 129311 119311 111379 129300 128975
Socio-economic 0.704 0.532 1.000
b1 8.1 8.6 7.4 8 7.9
needs
b2 452.6 584.3 341.6 409.91 404.786
b3 8232 8007 8290 8381.419 8276.652
c1 2866.7 2900.3 2851.2 2877 2860
c2 6577.2 6600.2 6560.5 6589.072 6650.137
Table 5 d1 50938.930 58914.760 58275.150 58714.760 58300.150
The priority weights of accessibility, resource, benefit, risk and environment. d2 1173. 1281 1081 1301 1079
d3 11.000 11.620 11.060 10.000 11.000
Performance(0.292) Business benefit Socio-economic
(0.479) needs (0.229) e1 4.660 3.060 4.600 4.700 4.600
e2 13.280 12.850 9.530 12.000 11.000
Accessibility 0.296 0.110 0.052
Resource 0.529 0.365 0.123 f1 70 70 80 90 80
Economy 0.060 0.408 0.033 f2 80 70 70 80 90
Risk 0.057 0.071 0.353 f3 100 100 100 100 100
Environment 0.060 0.046 0.440 g1 40,039 39,835 38,375 39,835 38,375
g2 5700 5700 5700 5700 5700
h1 30 50 30 60 70
h2 30 40 40 50 40
h3 40 40 50 60 50
h4 10 15 15 16 30
Table 6 h5 10 20 20 25 10
The relative priority weights of criteria and sub-criteria.

Attribute Criteria Priority Sub-criteria Local priority

weights weights
Accessibility (a) 1 a1 0.333 Table 8
a2 0.186 The performance scores of alternative SWHPS sites under five attributes.
a3 0.481
Accessibility Resource Economy
Resource (b) 0.594 b1 0.219
Relative Normalized Relative Normalized Relative Normalized
b2 0.467
b3 0.315 A 0.930 0.206 0.924 0.202 0.978 0.206
(c) 0.406 c1 0.399 B 0.906 0.201 0.992 0.217 0.920 0.193
c2 0.601 C 0.813 0.180 0.861 0.188 0.937 0.197
D 0.922 0.204 0.907 0.198 0.963 0.203
Economy (d) 0.692 d1 0.750
E 0.945 0.209 0.898 0.196 0.957 0.201
d2 0.125
d3 0.125 Risk Environment
(e) 0.308 e1 0.397
Relative Normalized Relative Normalized
e2 0.603
A 0.839 0.194 0.991 0.217
Risk (f) 1 f1 0.359
B 0.799 0.185 0.909 0.199
f2 0.404
C 0.839 0.194 0.933 0.205
f3 0.237
D 0.919 0.213 0.861 0.189
Environment (g) 0.674 g1 0.65 E 0.920 0.213 0.863 0.189
g2 0.35
(h) 0.326 h1 0.372
h2 0.372
h3 0.132
h4 0.062 an expert evaluation committee (hereafter referred to as commit-
h5 0.062
tee). The project managers, the investors of this project, determine
the performance, business benefit and socio-economic needs as
sub-goals with the help of the working group. Then the control
hierarchy of SWHPS site selection is established and shown in
Step 8: Select the optimal site for SWHPS. The Expert evaluation Fig. 2.
committee analyzes the performance rankings of the alterna- The committee uses the geographical information system and
tives under attributes, sub-goals and overall goal respectively grid map to find the potential SWHPS sites and finally five alterna-
to choose the best site for the SWHPS. Then the evaluation tive sites (hereafter referred to as alternatives) A–E are chosen.
results are submitted to the project managers. The project Alternatives A and B are located in the southwestern region of
managers analyze the decision result and decide whether to the province. Alternatives C and D are located in the northern re-
accept it. gion while alternative E is located in the eastern region. Then the
5. A case study of China committee determines the evaluation problems of the SWHPS site
selection and decomposes them into five evaluation attributes. 8
5.1. A Chinese case criteria and 23 sub-criteria are determined in all and shown in
Table 2. After these, the questionnaires are designed by the
One province in China wants to build a 49.5 MW SWHPS, the working group, and the evaluation committee and the project
state-owned energy investment company organizes an Auxiliary managers are invited to contribute their professional experiences
working group (hereafter referred to as working group) and invites respectively.
532 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533

Table 9 Table 10
The overall performance scores of alternative SWHPS site. The ranking of the alternative SWHPS sites.

Performance Business benefit Socio-economic needs Overall goal Attribute, sub-goal and overall goal Ranking

A 0.204 0.204 0.207 0.205 Accessibility E>A>D>B>C

B 0.208 0.202 0.197 0.203 Resource B>A>D>E>C
C 0.188 0.192 0.198 0.192 Economy A>D>E>C>B
D 0.201 0.201 0.200 0.201 Risk E=D>A=C>B
E 0.201 0.201 0.200 0.201 Environment A>C>B>D=E
Performance B>A>D=E>C
Business benefit A>B>D=E>C
Firstly, the pairwise comparison matrices of the three sub-goals Socio-economic needs A>D=E>C>B
are formed based on the opinions of the project managers. Then Overall goal A>B>D=E>C
the consistency of each matrix is examined, if the inconsistency
is not found, the geometric average method is applied to calculate
the final pairwise comparison of the three sub-goals with respect alternatives under overall goal, sub-goals and evaluation
to the overall goal shown in Table 4. The priority weights of sub- attributes. So in order to prove the managerial implications in this
goals is calculated by Eqs. (1) and (2) and shown in Table 5. The paper, we assume these conditions are not set up and the following
priority weights show that the project managers pay more atten- scenario happens.
tion to the business benefit of the SWHPS sites. Next, the commit- The project managers arbitrarily think the recourse attribute is
tee is required to determine the priority weights of attributes with more important for the business benefit sub-goal than others and
respect to each sub-goal by the same way and also shown in Ta- compel the committee to accept this suggestion. Then the commit-
ble 5. The five attributes have different important degrees to each tee adjusts the priority weights of five attributes with respect to
sub-goal, the resource attribute (0.529) and accessibility attribute the business benefit sub-goal, increases the priority weight of re-
(0.296) are important to the performance sub-goal, the economy source attribute from 0.365 to 0.565 and decreases that of econom-
attribute (0.408) and resource attribute (0.365) are the problem ical attribute from 0.408 to 0.208. The performance scores of
the business benefit sub-goal worries most about. The risk attri- alternatives under overall goal become (0.204, 0.205, 0.191,
bute (0.353) and environment attribute (0.44) are the most criteria 0.200, 0.200). If there does not exist any rankings of alternatives
for the socio-economic needs. Thirdly, the committee determines under sub-goals or attributes, it is no doubt that the alternative B
the priority weights of criteria and sub-criteria shown in Table 6. is the optimal SWHPS site. But when checking the rankings under
There must be illustrated that the criteria of a1, f1–f3 and h1– evaluation attributes, we will find the alternative B has the bad
h5 are qualitative criteria and are rated in a range from 0 to 100. performance at the economical attribute and the risk attribute, this
In addition, the criteria can be divided into two kinds, the positive will lower the profit and increase the risk of SWHPS project.
criteria and the negative criteria, such as the criteria of a1, a3, b1– Therefore, we can find that the interferences of project manag-
b3, c1–c3, e1–e2, f1–f3, g1–g2 and the five attributes are the posi- ers to the experts will decrease the scientificity of evaluation result
tive criteria. The positive criterion means that the higher the score since they are not based on the objective factors or the professional
on it, the better the performance of the alternative is. On the con- judgments. Meanwhile, the single evaluation result will hide the
trary, the others are negative criteria. The performance value of disadvantages of alternatives, thus will increase the probability
each alternative on each criterion is shown in Table 7. These per- of decision-making mistake.
formance values are further transformed into a number between So the meaning of defining the duties of roles is to protect the
0 and 1 by Eq. (5). Then the performance scores of alternatives un- independence of experts and then to ensure the scientificity of
der the five attributes, the sub-goals and the overall goal are calcu-
lated respectively and shown from Tables 8 and 9. Meanwhile the
rankings of the alternatives under them are shown in Table 10.
Table 11
From Table 10, the alternative A is expected to be the best The sensitivity analysis results.
SWHPS site. The alternative A ranks first at the sub-goals except
Sensitivity analysis Weight of sub-goals Ranking of
the performance sub-goal and has good scores at the five attri-
run alternatives
butes, so the alternative A is the best site for the SWHPS. The alter-
native B ranks first at the performance sub-goal, second at the 1 Performance (0.292)
Business benefit (0.479) A>B>D=E>C
business benefit sub-goal and last at the socio-economic needs Socio-economic needs
sub-goal. So the alternative B has great potential and can be (0.229)
exploited in the future, because except the resource attribute, it 2 Performance (0.229) A>B>D=E>C
ranks after third on the other evaluation attributes. Business benefit (0.479)
Socio-economic needs
In order to check the robustness of the evaluation result, the
(0.292)
project managers perform sensitivity analysis to reveal the effect 3 Performance (0.229) A>B>D=E>C
on the rankings of alternatives by changing the priority weights Business benefit (0.292)
of sub-goals. For this reason, we exchange the priority weights Socio-economic needs
for two sub-goals while others are constant. The results of sensitiv- (0.479)
4 Performance (0.479) A>B>D=E>C
ity analysis are given in Table 11. There is no change in the rank- Business benefit (0.292)
ings of alternatives. Socio-economic needs
According to the aforementioned analysis, the project managers (0.229)
choose the alternative A to be the optimal SWHPS site. 5 Performance (0.479) A>B>D=E>C
Business benefit (0.229)
Socio-economic needs
(0.292)
6. Discussion 6 Performance (0.292) A>B>D=E>C
Business benefit (0.229)
Socio-economic needs
In the aforementioned Chinese case, we define the duties of
(0.479)
roles in the decision process and provide various rankings of
 W. Yunna, S. Geng / Energy Conversion and Management 81 (2014) 527–533
evaluation result. Moreover, when the decision-making mistake
happens, it will be conducive to investigate the responsibility. Var-
ious rankings of alternatives under sub-goals and evaluation attri-
butes will provide detail information for project managers to
consider the alternatives thoroughly and then to decrease the
probability of decision-making mistake.
7. Conclusion
The site selection plays an important role in the entire life cycle
of SWHPS project. There are a few researches of SWHPS site selec-
tion, but some problems still exist: First, the SWHPS site evaluation
results are difficult to be understood by the project managers; sec-
ond, the independence of experts is difficult to be protected; third,
the project managers cannot consider the alternatives thoroughly
according to the single evaluation result. These problems limit
the usability, decrease scientificity of the evaluation result and in-
crease the probability of decision-making mistake and the diffi-
culty of responsibility investigation when the decision-making
mistake happens.
Hence, this paper firstly summarizes the accessibility, resource,
economical, risk and environmental attributes to be the important
factors of SWHPS site selection from the perspective of project
management. The aim of this step is to improve the usability of
the evaluation result. Second, at the condition that the strategic
goals can be fully satisfied, the duties of roles in the decision pro-
cess are defined in order to protect the independence of the experts
and then to ensure the scientificity of the evaluation result.
Then the decision framework of SWHPS site selection is estab-
lished based on the AHP method due to its practicability. In addi-
tion to the practical merit, the other merit of this decision
framework is that it can provide more information of the alterna-
tives than other decision frameworks. Because it provides not only
the rankings of alternatives under the over goal, but also the rank-
ings of alternatives under the sub-goals and the evaluation attri-
butes. This merit will help the project managers to analyze the
advantages and disadvantages of alternative sites clearly and eas-
ily, so that the probability of decision-making mistake can be de-
creased. Finally, a case of China is study. Therefore, from our
theoretical modeling and empirical demonstration, the decision
framework can effectively handle such a complicated problem
and lead to an outstanding result.
Acknowledgments
Project supported by the National Nature Science Foundation
of China (No. 71271085) and Philosophy and Social Science
Foundation of Beijing (12JGB044).
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