A Multi-Attribute Model for Wind Farm Location Combining Cloud and Utility Theories

Abstract

Nowadays sustainable development is a major focus of national and international economic, social, and environmental agendas, so that a good quality of life can be enjoyed by current and future generations. The problem of climate change has caused great concerns at all levels, from the general public to national governments and international agencies. Renewable energies can be an important remedy to many environmental problems that the world faces today. In this context, some new governmental policies have been adopted to encourage the introduction of renewable energies. But the energy planning scenario has completely changed over the past two decades from and almost exclusively concern with cost minimization of supply-side options to the need of explicitly multiple and conflicting objectives. Different and numerous groups of actors, such as institutions and administration authorities, potential investors, environmental groups, get involved in the process of fossil fuel energy substitution by renewable energies. This complex environment indicates the multi-criteria character of the problem. In this chapter multi-attribute decision-making method combining cloud and utility theory is proposed in order to evaluate different locations for a wind farm in the north of Spain. Whereas utility theory allows us to use different utility curves describing different attitudes toward risk, cloud theory provides a model that facilitates transformation of uncertainty contained in both quantitative and qualitative concepts to a uniform presentation in a numerical domain. Six locations are candidate to place the wind farm according to their topography, infrastructure, land use, safety, and number of days with wind speed >=70 km/h. The results show that the location with the highest number of days with wind speed >=70 km/h and the best land use attribute is the best place to locate the wind farm for both a risk aversion decision-maker and a risk-seeking decision-maker.