Energy planning under uncertain decision-making environment: An evidential reasoning approach to prioritize renewable energy sources

Abstract

Nowadays, making strategic decisions in a sensitive sector such as energy planning that usually requires allocating huge funds, time, and resources is a difficult task. For instance, prioritizing a set of Renewable Energy Sources (RES) is a complex multi-dimensional task that typically involves a range of conflicting criteria featuring different forms of evaluation data in an uncertain decision-making environment. This process is aligned with several sources that can be uncertain, including imprecise information, limited domain knowledge from decisionmakers, and failures to provide accurate judgments from experts. In this study, we propose to use the Evidential Reasoning (ER) approach to manage the expanding complexities and uncertainties in RES prioritization problem. The ER approach is employed as a multiple criteria framework to assess the appropriateness regarding the use of different renewable energy technologies. A case study is provided to illustrate the implementation process. Results show that using the ER approach when assessing the sustainability of different RES under uncertainty allows providing robust decisions, which brings out a more accurate, effective, and better-informed decision-making tool to conduct the evaluation process.