A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM APPLIED TO

RENEWABLE ENERGY FIELD

Bouchra Frikh, Hamza Sellak, Afaf Dadda, Brahim Ouhbi

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 10the International Conference onModeling, Optimization and Simulation - MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014-
Nancy – France “Toward circular Economy”

A DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM APPLIED TO RENEWABLE ENERGY

FIELD

B.FRIKH, H.SELLAK A. DADDA, B.OUHBI

FSDM –UniversitySidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah ENSAM- University My Ismail
Fès, Morocco. Meknes, Morocco.
bfrikh@yahoo.fr, hamza.sellak@yahoo.com afaf_dadda@yahoo.fr, ouhbib@yahoo.co.uk

ABSTRACT:With the introduction of new concepts in operation and planning of renewable energy sources, decision
making is becoming more critical than ever before. These concepts include renewable energy planning and policy,
evaluation and assessment,project selection and finally the importance of environmental concerns. This paper aims to
present a decision support system (DSS) applied to renewable energy field, based on a new developed relational multi-
criteria clustering algorithm. The presented tool is a Renewable Energy WEB DSS application (RE-WEB-DSS)
combining different layers to achieve the main goal of a stakeholder trying to select the best renewable energy plant
projects (REP).To do so, a comparison between several existing decision support systems and multi-criteria models,
highlighting their applications and limitations in the context of renewable energy.This is followed by a discussion of the
different factors that should be considered to ensure optimal results. A subsequent section introduces and analyses the
RE-WEB-DSS approach and methodology. The paper explains also the approach and illustrates the tool’s algorithm
application through a simulation.Experimental studies of real cases are conducted. These cases studies demonstrate the
effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed DSS.

KEYWORDS:Renewable Energy Projects, Decision Support System,Multi-criteria Decision Making,Clustering Algorithm.

manage distributed and delocalized manufacturing

1. INTRODUCTION
The encouragement of renewable energy is a key policy
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the energy bill.
Over the last three decades there has been rapid growth
in renewable energy sources (RES) development and
energy efficiency. Nowadays, RES are considered as an
engine for increasing economic competitiveness and a
way to reduce dependency on fossil fuel source.However,
for stakeholders, it is clearly observed that the real
decision-making process regarding the choice of
renewable energy project plant is multidimensional, made
up the number of aspects at different levels – economic,
technical, environmental and social. Therefore, getting
clear and explicit solutions might be very complicated.
Hence, the need arises to develop tools that should enable
the decision maker (e.g. investor, government, association
and electricity supplier) to select a series of alternatives
(objectives are usually conflicting) and so, the solution
which highly depends on the preferences of decision-
makers must be a compromise.
On the other hand, transitions to decentralized and
renewable production pose many challenges and have
recently attracted the attention of decision makers and
academic researchers. One of the most important
parameters for the renewable energy sources development
is the enhancement of all the involved producers. The
success of these producers is based on the formulation of
an intelligent decision support system, which is able to
information regarding energy efficiency.
To the best of our knowledge there are no decision
systems supporting the operational environment of energy
companies. The existing enterprise systems are generally
limited to monitoring, analysis and reporting. According
to Zampou et al. [21], there is a gap, with respect to
energy-awareness in manufacturing, between the
solutions available and the actual implementation.
Therefore, an interesting issue to be addressed is: how
information systems can be used to reduce energy
consumption? Such type of information systems should
collect and analyze energy data sets, integrate energy
flows with other information flows, support optimization
of energy consumption and contribute to energy efficient
business process.
The present paper aims at depicting the context and the
need of strengthening the use of renewable energies to
achieve sustainability goals, acknowledging the need of
tools that facilitate the decision-making process in this
field in operational options for decision makers. After a
review of the state of the art in the existent DSS as well as
the MCDM-methods used in renewable energy field, we
discuss the main functionalities and components of a DSS
(section 3). ‘New Renewable Energy DSS’ subsections
describe the proposed algorithm, present the main
guidelines that can be applied to achieve the final purpose
of the algorithm and finally illustrate how it works
through simulations.Also, experimental studies of real
cases are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France
feasibility of the proposed DSS (section 5).Finally, the
‘Conclusions’ section draws some conclusions about
theadvantages, limitations andfuture ameliorations to
overcome the identified barriers.
2. OVERVIEW OF THE DSS IN THE FIELD OF
RENEWABLE ENERGY
2.1 Literature review
Decision supportsystems have, since the 1980s, become
an established part of mainstream management
science[22], and the increased sophistication and
computational prowess ofcomputer systems make them
an ideal tool for the rather complex model requirements
that seembest suited for solving decision problems of the
present age. Indeed, there are many researchedand
documented instances of decision support systems being
critical to decision outcomes the renewable energy
field.In most cases, the applications of DSS in renewable
energy field include the problems of: Electricity
Transport problem, Electricity Production, Energy
Efficiency, Energy Demand/Supply problems, Buildings
Energy Management, Carbon Emissions, Cost of Product
Designs and finally the impact of Pollution on
Environment, etc.
From an investment proposal to complex scientific
analysis, decision-making is a key aspect in projects.
Only a few works were focusing their studies on the
renewable energy plant projects selection. Patlitzianas et
al [7]. presents an information DSS towards the
formulation of a modern energy companies environment.
It consists of an expert subsystem and a multi-criteria
decision making subsystem based on ELECTRE III and
developed with Java. This important tool suffers from
weaknesses of the ELECTRE III method. Another
interesting work was proposed by Zampou et al.
[21]discuss the industrial requirements for an energy
aware information system and system functionalities that
should be supported by an energy-aware information
system. This system doesn’t use a multi-criteria model to
manage the decision maker.
On the other hand a number of mathematical theories
have been evolved specifically for solving decision
questions. Many of these theories have been found useful
in real world decision support models.Most of the
theories tackle the question of optimization [23]. Linear
programming, mixed integer programming, fuzzy sets,
bayesian nets, and other probabilistic linear and nonlinear
modeling procedures consistently recur in decision
support system design [24]. In addition to that, recently,
almost the majority of developed DSS choose to use the
so called Multi-criteria Decision Aid methods (MCDA)
as a mathematical models to resolve the problems of
decision-making.
The next section will undertake the MCDA methods
and their own contributions in the problems related to
renewable energy field especially the selection of the best
plants project.
2.2 Multi-criteria Decision Aid (MCDA)
Multi-criteria analysis, often called Multi-criteria
Decision Making (MCDM) or Multi-criteria Decision Aid
methods (MCDA), is a branch of a general class of
Operations Research models which deal with the process
of making decisions in the presence of multiple
objectives. These methods, which can handle both
quantitative and qualitative criteria, share the common
characteristics ofconflict among criteria,
incommensurable units, and difficulties in
design/selection of alternatives [10].The main purpose of
Multi-criteria Decision Analysis is to provide decision
aiding tools that help finding solutions for real-world
problems, most often, problems having conflicting points
of view [25]. The multi-criteria problem is related to the
methods and procedures by which the different criteria
can be formally involved in the decision process.
The complexity of energy planning and energy projects
in particular makes multi-criteria analysis a valuable tool
in the decision-making process. A number of conflicting
factors, technological, economic, environmental, risk,
social, etc., must be taken into account each time,
whereas different groups of decision makers (DMs) get
involved in the process. Each group brings along different
criteria and points of view, which must be resolved within
a framework of understanding and mutual compromise.
MCDA field contain several different methods of which
the most important are: Analytic Hierarchy Process
(AHP), Preference Ranking Organization METHod for
Enrichment Evaluations (PROMETHEE), ELimination Et
ChoixTraduisant la REalité (ELimination and Choice
Expressing REality or more commonly-ELECTRE), and
Multi-attribute Utility Theory (MAUT). The comparison
of MCDM methods related to renewable energy planning
is discussed in the literature [6, 10–14]. The use of Multi-
criteria Decision Aid (MCDA) techniques has a long
history in energy projects and outranking methods like
ELECTRE and PROMETHEE have proved valuable
where many different criteria should be taking in
consideration.In a previous analysis byPohekarand and
M.Ramachandran[10], multi-attribute utility theory
(MAUT) was the most common MCDM method used in
energy planning literature.
At present, we can observe that the most developed
DSS especially in renewable energy field,in the greater
part, apply Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM)
methods in order to compile and analyze data input, to
produceresults.
3. DSS FUNCTIONALITIES ANDCOMPONENTS
One of the most important decision
makerresponsibilitiesisthe problem of selection. Decision
support systems are usually defined as a software
packageable to assist decision making in complex
decision situation, where no simple solution methodology
can be applied.The main functions of aDSS are:
a. Integrating decision analysis techniques with data
access and management.
b. A user-friendliness “easily used by the decision
makers”.
c. Adopting the changes in the decision environment as
well as the possible adjustments in the decision-making
policy and the preferences of the stakeholders.
d. Applying an interactive mode to enable real-time
decision-making.
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France
In other way to achieve all of these functionalities, a
DSS should have at least some basic elementswhich
are(Figure 1):
a. A database thatincludes all the needed information and
the required data to execute the analysis of the problem at
hand.
b. Apowerfulmodel base of a DSS which is a collection of
decision analysis algorithm, used to support decision
making.The model base management system is
responsible for the treatmentof the model base including
the storage and retrieval of models that are developed,
their update and adjustment.
c. An Interfaceto conduct the communication between the
end users and the developed DSS. A special part of the
user interface, the dialog generation and management
system are specifically designed to manage this
communication.
In addition to all these functionalities,the proposed DSS
tool in the next sectionis a Web-based application
assisting decisions makers to choose among a various
alternatives, the best renewable energy plant, thus making
it easier and less costly to be accessed by all relevant
stakeholders in geographically distributed locations.
4. RELATIONAL MULTI-CRITERIA
CLUSTERING ALGORITHM
In this section, we describe the proposed algorithm and
the new hybrid developed MCDM-method which is an
aggregation of the well-known K-means algorithm,
Relational Multi-criteria Clustering and Profiles concept
based on calculating a Preference functions between all
the participated alternatives. By combining all these
concepts, we become able to use at the same time the
important results of the clustering research, the widely
used algorithm K-means, and the basic notion of the
preferences.
4.1 Background
a. K-means clustering algorithm
One of the most common techniques in data analysis is
to group together objects that display similar properties,
based on certain criteria. This is a very natural process
and plays a very important role in our lives. In fact, one of
the most basic activities of human beings, when trying to
understand a new object or phenomenon, is to compare it
with other known ones by identifying common
characteristics [29, 30]. From a methodological point of
view, the process of grouping objects together in data
analysis is split in two: classification and
clustering.Classification is a supervised grouping process
that relies on a priori information regarding the groups in
which to place the objects, which are called classes.
Clustering, on the other hand, does not benefit from any
knowledge on the structure of the data. The purpose of
clustering is to group objects together, based on the
natural structure of the data, using measures of similarity.
Hence, objects that are similar should be placed in the
same cluster while objects that are dissimilar should be
placed in different ones.
One of the most well-known partitioning clustering
algorithms is the K-means algorithm, which was
independently discovered in different fields by Steinhaus
[31], Lloyd [32], Ball and Hall [33] and MacQueen [34].
The algorithm can be summarized in the following way: a
set of centroids is generated, usually randomly; the
objects in X are assigned to the centroid that is closest to
them, therefore constructing a partition; a new set of
centroids is then generated from the average evaluations
of the objects from each set inside the partition; all these
steps, except the first, are then repeated until a certain
amount of time, or a certain number of iterations have
passed, or if the centroids no longer change significantly
across consecutive iterations.
Since more than 50 years ago, when K-means was first
proposed, many variations have been created, in order to
deal with some of the shortcomings of this method. Some
of the more important ones pertain to the choice of the
number of clusters the algorithm should retrieve, the
convergence towards locally optimal solutions and the
fact that the resulting clusters are hyper-spherical in
shape.
b. Multi-criteria clustering algorithm
Some clustering problems cannot be appropriately
solved with classical clustering algorithms because they
require optimization over more than one criterion. In
general, solutions optimal according to each particular
criterion are not identical. Thus, the problem arises of
how to find the best solution satisfying as much as
possible all criteria considered. In this sense the set of
Pareto efficient clustering was defined a clustering is
Pareto efficient if it cannot be improved on any criterion
without sacrificing some other criterion.
Traditional clustering uses attributes, which means that
there is no preference order on scale of attributes and no
order between clusters [35, 36].
In the field of multi-criteria decision aid, we can usually
distinguish three main problems [25]. The first one can be
formulated as identifying a subset of alternatives that are
considered to be the best or the more interesting ones.
This is referred to as the choice problem. The second one
is related to the ranking of the actions from the best to the
worst one. Finally, in sorting problems, the decision
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France
maker focuses on the assignment of alternatives to pre-
defined ordered categories [37-39]. Recently some
researchers have addressed the question of detecting
clusters in multi-criteria contexts. In an earlier paper, De
Smet et al. [19] have developed an extension of the
traditional K-means algorithm to tackle this problem. The
main contribution of their work relies on the definition of
a distance measure that is based on binary preference
relations between the alternatives.
The aforementioned work was the start for many
researchers in this context. But, he had one important
issue which is the lack of information about the relations
between the detected clusters. In a second work [42] De
Smet and Eppe was notified this issue in their work and
they tried not only to detect clusters in a multi-criteria
context but also to identify relations between these
clusters. Typically we are looking for information such as
“two clusters A and B are incomparable while they are
both preferred to a third cluster C”. As mentioned in
Cailloux et al. [40], this is referred to as relational multi-
criteria clustering.
On the other hand, multi-criteria clustering uses at least
criteria. In a special case of multi-criteria clustering,
multi-criteria ordered clustering (MCOC), there is also
order on clusters [40, 41].
4.2 The Model
Let { }be a set of n elements called
‘alternatives’ and let { } be a set of m
elements called‘criteria’. The clustering model uses the
idea that inside the same cluster, all the alternatives are
similar; this means that these alternatives have the same
preference relation to more or less the same
alternatives.In the following subsections, we will focus on
three basic concepts needed to develop thisclustering
model.
a. Preference modeling
This method compares alternatives using preference
modeling that constructs so-called profile of each
alternative.
The comparison between alternatives , profiles arealike.
results on one of the following relations: Preference (P),
Indifference (I) or Incomparability (J).
{
Only one of these relations is true between each couple
of given alternatives.Indeed, these relations translate
situations ofpreference, indifference and incomparability
and itcan be assumed that they satisfy the following
requirements:
{ assigned to the K suited clusters. That is why we can say
b. Profile
To build the profiles of alternatives, could be
considered the application of classic multi-criteria tools -
Utility Theory, Outranking methods (Electre,
Promethee,etc.), AHP, etc. -and the conceptsof preference
modeling mentioned in theprevious subsection lead to
define (Preference,Indifference and Incomparability)
relations .However, it is important to note
thatonly outranking methods lead to define the
incomparabilityrelation J. When applying othermethods,
AHP or Utility Theory for instance, theJ relation will
remain empty and the comparisonbetween pairs of actions
will be restricted to P andI relations.
Once these relations are elicited, any action
canbe characterized with a profile which is defined
as being 4–uple〈 〉 where:
{ }
{ }
{ }
{ }
As aforementioned, note that majority of works don’t
define the preference function which is the main factor to
calculate the profile of each alternative. One of the main
contributions of our work is a new preference function
that we will detail in a next section.
c. Distance
Due to the multi-criteria nature of the problem the
concept of distance, so widely used in
classificationtechniques, does not seem to be well
suitedhere. This observation constitutes a
fundamentalbarrier to the extension of famous
clusteringtechniques, like the K-means algorithm. To
avoidthis bottleneck, De Smet [19] defines adistance
between alternatives that will take into accounttheir
multi-criteria nature.Basically, the intuition behind this
concept isthat two alternatives will be as close as their
So, let be the profile of , thedistance between two
alternatives is definedas follows:
∑ | ( )|
( )
4.3 The Algorithm
Our work is based on a particular clustering approach
from MCDA, the Multi-criteria Relational Clustering
approach from [19]. This is, to our knowledge, one of the
first contributions to clustering in MCDA, which
additionally takes into account the preferential
information available in this context. Ouralgorithm is an
extension of the k-means algorithm with a MCDA
background. The Multi-criteria clustering (MC clustering)
method utilizes criteria, and not attributes when compared
to classic clustering approaches, however, alternatives are
that it is a Relational Multi-criteria Clustering (RMCC)
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France

according to taxonomy of clustering methods. In addition o are respectively the index sets of
to that, another contribution of our algorithm is that benefit criteria and cost criteria and is the
always possible to order the resulting clustering, which normalized value of .
makes it not only a RMCC but also an Ordered Multi-
criteria Clustering (OMCC).  Step 3: Now we can calculate values of two
While now let’s set the steps of our approach: functions of Select-ability and Reject-ability for
each alternative as following:
 Step 0: The starting point of this approach is a
decision matrix or eventually an alternatives matrix ∑
which had the following structure: o ∑ ∑

[ ] o ∑
∑
∑

[ ][ ]  Step 4: Afterward, the profile of each

alternative is determined based on one of the 4
relations of comparison between objects, based on
preference relations that express whether an
Where:
o { } is a set of the evaluated alternative is indifferent, incomparable or preferred
alternatives, to the other, as follows:
o { } is a set of criteria according ( )
{ }
to which the decision problem will be ( )
evaluated, ( )
{ }
o is the corresponding value of an alternative i ( )
to a criterion j. ( )
( )
 Step 1: Splitting the criteria into two categories: ( )
Select-ability criteria (Set of criterion to ( )
{ }
Maximize/Benefit) and Reject-ability ones (Set of
criterion to Minimize/Cost). Note that each criterion { }
{ }
had a weight that reflects the decision maker
preferences.
The vector of weightings { }  Step 5: Finally those created profiles will be the
should respect the following conditions: input of our Multi-criteria Relational Clustering
Algorithm. In our case it’s a K-means clustering
o algorithm based on the definition of the
o ∑ aforementioned distance between two alternatives.
Then the method follows the general lines of the K-
 Step 2: Establish a normalized version of the initial means approach, with a slight change:
decision matrix. This step is very important in order
to unify the different unit of each criterion. The o Unlike in classical K-means, an initial set of
structure of the new matrix can be expressed as K clusters or partitions is generated first
follows: and not the set of centroids. We have used an
approach of randomly constructing this initial
partition.
o o The centroids are then generated from this
initial set of clusters, through their profiles,
o
in the following way [43] considering a
Where: centroid of a cluster, an alternative from the
dataset will be placed in one of the four sets
o { } of the profiles of this centroid with the
o { }
condition that it also appears in the same set
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France
for a majority of the alternatives of that
cluster. For each cluster a centroid is
generated through a profile as defined
the following formula:
|{ ( )
o A new set of clusters is built from the
centroids by assigning each alternative to the
cluster whose centroid it is closest to, using
the distance measure defined before.
o This process is repeated until that the K
partitions are no longer change, or a certain
number of iterations have passed in order to
eliminate a potential infinite loop.
 Step 6: A relation between any two clusters
is also proposed through a simple
majority rule. We calculate the relations between all
the K created clusters based on the preference matrix
(amatrix that contents relations between all the
existents alternatives).
[ ]
[ ][ ] finally Identify sets of profiles for each alternative).
Where:
( )
{ generated first and not the set of centroids (Figure 2,
 Step 7: The definition of a relation between two
clusters will be based on the determination of the
dominant relation between the objects belonging to
each cluster. Formally, we define the frequency of
occurrence of a preference relation when considering
a couple of clusters as follows:
( )
|{ }|
{ }
The proposed measure is computed for each
preference relation belonging to the set { }.
Then, the dominant relation can be determined by:
}|
 Step 8: Finally an additional step could be present, if
a small test is validated: if there is no
incomparability’s relations between the K clusters we
can prooced to aranking between the n alternatives
based on the relations between the K clusters (K =
Number of alternatives in this case). Else we can just
use the relations between the different created
clusters to choose the best and worst ones).
4.4 Simulation
To illustrate how the proposed algorithm works, a
simulation of different iterations from the algorithm
process applied on a decision matrix(Table 1) is presented
below. Let’s consider a set of six alternatives
and a set of five criteria Note that,
only the criterion is a benefit one, while all the rest are
cost criterion. First of all, a preliminary phase consists of
preparing the input for the algorithm (Normalized
decision matrix, Calculate Preference functions and
The result of this phase can be summarized in a
preferences matrix (Table 2). The created profiles will be
the input of our algorithm. In our case it’s a K-means
clustering algorithm based on the definition of the
aforementioned distance between two alternatives. Then
the method follows the general lines of the K-means
approach, with a slight change.
An initial set of K=3 clusters or partitions C is
Iteration 1). We have used an approach of randomly
constructing this initial partition. The centroids are then
generated from this initial set of clusters, through their
profiles, in the following way considering a centroid of a
cluster, an alternative from the dataset will be placed in
one of the four sets of the profiles of this centroid with
the condition that it also appears in the same set for a
majority of the alternatives of that cluster. In this case,
while choosing 3 clusters on this input data, the algorithm
proceeds on 3 iterations until there are no changes (Figure
2).
Now, we should identify the nature of relations between
the created clusters(Figure 3). For example, a cluster
means that all alternatives in are better than
alternatives in , same for the relation , a cluster
means that all alternatives in are worse than
alternatives in . In addition, if K = 6 (number of clusters
equal number of alternatives) we can order the set of
alternatives, in a condition that there are no
incomparability relations between the different clusters.
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France

5. DSS WEB APPLICATION IMPLEMENTATION

P+ P- P+ I P+ P+

Our RE-WEB-DSS is a JEE (Java Enterprise Edition) P+ P- P+ P- I P-

dynamic web application based on many technics at
different layers. P+ P- P+ P- P+ I
First of all, we are using the last JSF (Java Server
Table2Preference matrix.
Faces) implementation “Mojarra 2.2.6 included in
Glassfish server 4” as an MVC (Model-View-Controller)
component-based framework to separate the different
layers of our application. Then we used the ORM
EclipseLink JPA implementation (Java Persistence API)
for the data access layer to communicate with our
database for basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update and
Delete) operations.
Finally the presentation layer is designed with
combining the libraryPrimefaces5.0 with the most used
web languages: CSS, JavaScript and Ajax to create end-
users interfaces and to present the results of our decision
making algorithm. AUI (user-interface) example from our
application is shown in Figure 4. Note that many other
API are used to achieve different objectives such as the
encryption/decryption of user’s personal information or
even the parsing of date type objects,etc.
All the used frameworks, API and technologies are open
sources.

6. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In order to demonstrate the usefulness and effectiveness

of our DSS, a comparative study of more than 10
published researches had been made. However, we had
chosen to present in this section just one of the published
researchers that facesthe RE selection problematic.

11,4 119,0 5,8 105,0 22080,0

8,6 164,0 9,6 160,0 28100,0

9,0 119,0 4,5 143,0 24650,0

7,9 128,0 6,7 177,0 32700,0

9,4 151,0 7,6 136,0 22750,0

7,9 164,0 8,4 180,0 27350,0

Table1Decision matrix.

I P- P+ P- P- P-

P+ I P+ P+ P+ P+

P- P- I P- P- P-
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France

conventional power plant) of P >50MW is the best ranked

by both methods.

6. CONCLUSION

In this paper we have developed a Decision Support System

(DSS) applied to Renewable Energy field. The established
tool is developed based on an aggregation of the well-known
K-means algorithm, Relational Multi-criteria Clustering and
Profiles concept based on calculating a Preference function
between all the participated alternatives.The originality of
this DSS is due to the used frameworks, API’s and
technologies which all are open sources. DSS based on these
various technologies will provide an analytical and
decisional mechanism from higher level (Evaluation matrix)
to detailed reports ( a sample BI Bar Chart ) to answer many
important questions determining the final decision of the
participant stakeholders.The developed DSS has been tested
on more than ten international published researches. Each
time, the obtained results completely matched the published
ones.

Future developments in our RE-DSS explore the inclusion of

We consider the case study of selecting the best electrical a full RE Information System that should cover all RE field
generation technology based on the renewable energy problems such as the Energy Efficiency, Forecasting,
sources in Spain. This study had used the VIKOR method Knowledge Management and last and not least the semantics
to resolve the problem of selection. The decision making as an attempt to make the decision makers aware of aspects
matrix presented in Table 1 include7 criteria and a set of of the decision process that they might not have considered
13 evaluated project. The designed systems will be in first time, and to run consistency checks. Ontology (a
evaluated according to the considered criteria: Power (P), technique for semantic representation) will be used to
Investment Ratio (IR), Implementation Period (IP), represent the domain knowledge of different renewable
energy technologies, requirements and policies to support
Operating Hours (OH), Useful Life (UL), Operation and
the decision process.
Maintenance Costs (O&M) and tons of emissions of CO2
avoided per year (tCO2/y). These emissions are estimated
Criteria/ C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7
by the Spanish Government according to the increase in Alternatives
RE projects [1].
Finally as shown in Figure 5, the result of our ranking A1 5000 937 1 2350 20 1.470 1,929,936
method is 100% matching the results find by the VIKOR
method. Effectively, the concerned study gives us, as a A2 10,000 937 1 2350 20 1.470 3,216,560
compromise solution the alternative A12. This
alternative, a Biomass plant (Co-combustion in a A3 25,000 937 1 2350 20 1.510 9,649,680
 MOSIM’14–November 5-7-2014 - Nancy - France

A4 50000 1,500 1.5 3100 25 1.450 472,812

multicriteriagroup decision-making framework,
Renewable Energy 28, 961–973.
A5 20,000 700 2 2000 25 0.700 255,490 [4] B. Vucijak, T. Kupusovic, S. MidzcKurtagic, and A.
Ceric, 2013.Applicability of multicriteria decision aid to
A6 35,000 601 2.5 2000 25 0.600 255,490 sustainable hydropower, Applied Energy, 101, 261-267
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A7 50,000 5,000 2 2596 25 4.200 482,856 of multiple criteria decision making methodologies for
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A8 5000 1,803 1 7500 15 7.106 2,524,643 Cyprus, A review.Energy Policy 38, 7783–7792
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A9 5000 1.803 1 7500 15 5.425 2,524,643 support system for the choice of renewable energy
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A10 5000 1.803 1 7500 15 5.425 2,524,643
International Journal of Distributed Energy Resources, 2,
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A11 5000 1.803 1 7500 15 2.813 2,524,643
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A12 56,000 856 1 7500 20 4.560 4,839,548
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A13 2000 1.503 1.5 7000 20 2.512 5,905,270
the formulation of a modern energy companies’
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