Performance Evaluation for Micro-Turbine Using Modified TOPSIS With Objective Weights Available to Purchase

Micro-turbine is paid more and more attention in scientific research and commercial application with the development of distribution generation (DG) in the global range. It is essential to make a synthetic and scientific evaluation on the performance of micro-turbine in order to promote the progress of the distributed generation technology using micro-turbine. This study presents the synthetic performance evaluation of micro-turbine. Some performance characters (rated capacity, generating efficiency, overall system efficiency, unit cost, fuel consumption, multi-fuel, NO_x emission level, noises and life time) are chosen as evaluating criterions and some common micro-turbines are taken as evaluating objects in this paper. Considering the difficulty of fuzzy synthetic evaluation method in calculation of the multiple factors and the ignorance of the relationship among evaluating objects, a modified TOPSIS with objective weights is introduced and applied in performance assessment of the micro-turbines. Each criterion weight is calculated based on Shannon’s entropy concept. The evaluation result of the example shows that this approach is favorable for fuzzy synthetic evaluation of micro-turbine performance, particularly applicable for situations where reliable subjective weights from experts cannot be obtained. The evaluation results can also be as references for manufactures how to improve design of micro-turbines and for users how to make proper selection of micro-turbines.