A decision support technique for the design of hybrid solar-wind power systems

This paper presents a decision support technique to help decision makers study the influencing factors in the design of a hybrid solar-wind power system (HSWPS) for grid-linked applications. These factors relate mainly to political and social conditions, and to technical advances and economics. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to quantify the various divergencies of opinions, practices and events that lead to confusion and uncertainties in planning HSWPS. The trade-off/risk method is used to generate multiple plans under 16 different futures and obtain the corresponding trade-off curves. Unlike the traditional 2-D simulation, a novel modeling of a trade-off surface in 3-D space is presented where the knee set is determined using the minimum distance approach. Robust and inferior plans are segregated based on their frequent occurrence in the conditional decision set of each future and hedging analysis to reduce risk is performed in order to assign alternative options in case risky futures occur.