A Multicriteria Decision Framework for Solar Power Plant Location Selection Problem with Pythagorean Fuzzy Data: A Case Study on Green Energy in Turkey

Abstract

Turkey is one of the most suitable countries for solar power plants, owing to its ideal location in terms of receiving solar radiation; accordingly, plans are in place to expand its solar power plant system to fulfill the increasing energy demand. In this study, a combination of multicriteria decision-making and fuzzy logic was used to evaluate potential locations (cities in southern Turkey) to install new solar power plants subject to different criteria of an uncertain nature. The proposed methodology has several attractive features, which are described throughout this study. The criteria were selected based on the literature and the opinions of experts. In addition, a new criterion (capacity of existing solar power plants) was added to achieve more precise results. Ten criteria and eighteen cities were selected to form the decision matrix for the problem. First, the weight of each criterion was computed by stepwise weight assessment ratio analysis (SWARA). Then, the TOPSIS approach was extended to the Pythagorean fuzzy form in ranking the locations of the decision matrix as a new solution procedure. The results show that the best candidate city to install a new solar power plant is Antalya, followed by Karaman and Malatya as the second and third best candidates, respectively. Finally, to measure the impact of the changes in the weight of the criteria, a sensitivity analysis was conducted. Multiple scenarios were considered, and the results indicated that Antalya was the best alternative in most of the scenarios.