Abstract
The recent revolution in the use of renewable energy worldwide has opened many dimensions of research and development for sustainable energy. In this context, the use of wind energy has received notable attention. One critical decision in the development of a wind farm is the selection of the most appropriate turbine compatible with the characteristics of the geographical location under consideration in order to harness maximum energy. This selection process considers multiple decision criteria which are often in conflict with each other, as improving one criterion negatively affects one or more other criteria. Therefore, it is desired to find a tradeoff solution where all selection criteria are simultaneously optimized to the best possible level. This paper proposes a TOPSIS (The Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) based approach for multi-criteria selection of wind turbine. Three decision criteria, namely, hub height, wind speed, and net capacity factor are used in the decision process. A case study is shown on real data collected from the Aljouf region located at an altitude of 753 meters above sea level in the northern part of Saudi Arabia. Seventeen turbines with rated capacities ranging from 1.5 GW to 3 GW from various manufacturers are evaluated. Results indicate that Vestas V110 turned out to be the most appropriate turbine for the underlying site.
