With growing awareness of the environmental hazards caused by greenhouse gases, people from different occupations are taking about eliminating or bringing the greenhouse gases levels to bare minimum. Research is being conducted, both theoretically and experimentally, in the direction of increasing efficiency of renewable technologies, optimization of wind farm layouts for maximum energy extraction, selection of most suitable wind turbines for selected site, reduction of cost of energy, solution of grid connectivity issues for larger penetrations of intermittent sources of energy. These intermittent sources of energy include the wind, solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, biomass, ocean currents, geothermal and so on. Of these, wind power is the most intermittent source of energy. The intensity of wind speed changes with time, place, and height and has to be well understood for its efficient conversion to energy.

The recent revolution in the use renewable energy worldwide has opened many dimensions of research and development for sustainable energy options. 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 affect 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. 


Multi-Criteria Selection of Wind Turbine Using TOPSIS Approach

Division / Sponsor:
International Gas Turbine Institute (IGTI)

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2020/volume/84058

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