Technological, economic and sustainability evaluation of power plants using the Analytic Hierarchy Process

Complexity of power plant evaluation is steadily rising, as more criteria are involved in the overall assessment while evaluation data change rapidly. Apart from evaluating several aspects of power plants separately, a multicriteria analysis based on hierarchically structured criteria is necessary, so as to address the overall assessment of power plants according to the technological, economic and sustainability aspects. For this reason, in this paper, ten types of power plant are evaluated using nine end node criteria properly structured under the Analytical Hierarchy Process. Moreover, pairwise comparisons allow for accurate subjective criteria weighting. According to the scenario based on the subjective criteria weighting, emphasis is laid on sustainability driving renewable energy power plants at the top of the overall ranking, while nuclear and fossil fuel power plants rank in the last five positions. End node criteria contribution to each power plant and power plant performance per end node criterion is presented for all types of power plant and end node criteria. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.